Snake Oil
by Cormac Jeswinnet
Summary: Cheating at cards and dice used to be exciting enough for the quiet man in the corner. Lately, however, he's getting bored, getting dangerous. When a dark-eyed conman comes over the hill into Bakerville, it could finally be the distraction Holmes has been waiting for. What exactly is in the mysterious miracle water on sale? (Western/Conman AU - an Xmas present)
1. Marked

Bakerville lies quiet, oblivious. Hell itself might be riding towards it, but it ain't arrived yet, and it seems the town is of a mind that it ought to get a good night's sleep ahead of the fight. But for the brave or the foolhardy, there's a pool of light on the corner opposite the store, and the noise of loud laughing and chairs turned over, of glasses being brought together. In the case of the latter, it's your own good guess whether they are brought together in toast or to be broken. Outside, across the street, the sheriff stands patient against a hitching post, whistling a tune to pass time.

But it's inside, and more precisely at a little table at the end of the bar, where he may soon be required. It's a miner, of course, blackened and barely intelligible, that sits out in the light for all to see. He's got a gap-toothed grin stretched out over his face and a glint in his eyes. It don't take a master poker player to see, he thinks he's got gold in that handful of cards. It don't take one, but anyway that's what he's got.

The man across the table, in the shadows, hangs back quiet against the wall. Beneath his chair one foot taps gently backward, undoing a trick latch on the case below. It moves slowly so the front of it won't drop too hard to the floor and be heard. Then it kicks back again, this time opening up a secret place inside the lid. Because keeping one's cool is alright, and having the sheriff right outside is alright, and having a good friend in the venerable keeper of this old saloon (and in her shotgun), that's alright too. It's just nothing beats having a little artillery of your own right close at hand. He's never had to take the Colt out and fire it. Doesn't mean tonight ain't the night.

The miner pushes his money forward, all of it, and lays out his cards. Three wise men and a pair of eights. The man in the shadows nods, because there's no contesting, that's a beautiful hand. He appreciates it like the connoisseurs back out East appreciate fine art. But the Miner thinks he's nodding because he's beat. He reaches out to scoop home the pot, laughing quiet to himself. Asking himself, maybe, what all those other men were talking about, what they could've possibly meant, when they told him this shill was tough.

A long white hand, all bones, stretches out of the dark and stops him.

He puts out his own cards at the curling edge of the baize he carries rolled up in the case. A five and an eight and a nine and a seven and a six. It don't sound like much but they all have those pretty red hearts on them. Put in order, they look pretty good.

The miner unfolds his hands, and sits back. But he doesn't move from the table. The card player doesn't reach either, and the money sits between them like live dynamite. Something of that old grin, though with none of its joy, returns to the miner's face. "Them's _marked_ cards," he snarls.

And the player says blithely, "Well, alright." He picks up the five of hearts from amongst his own and plants his elbow on the table. The card is held up and slowly turned around and around between his fingers. "You tell me how that card's marked, and every last cent on the table is yours." He turns it and turns it. He suffers to have it snatched away and turned and turned in better like. And now, again, his foot is at work beneath the chair, moving the case forward, bringing the gun into easy reach. He can picture it – he'd drop down to avoid a blow, arm raised to protect himself if the table was overturned on him. Snatch the gun out of its straps and be back on his feet before a second fist could follow. He can picture it and his heart beats for the first time in about a week.

Just a flutter, just the once, but as close as he gets these days to a pulse.

It dies again when the miner throws the card back down and leaves his fight behind. It's the others, that group waiting for him. They've all been to this table at least once before. They've all accused these cards of being marked. They're already laughing at him, without him starting the same fight most of them have already lost. He lets it go.

The player gathers the deck and sinks back into his corner. One hand cuts and shuffles. It was only moments ago, but he finds he can't recall, not the tiniest detail, of how it felt to feel awake again. He never can, and it never does last long enough to be enjoyed. He sighs, and beneath his chair kicks shut the trick flap and the case lid again.

Glass rattles nearby. His ears prick, in case it's meant to be broken for him, but it's tumblers on a tray, being collected. He can tell without looking; there's a whisper of a skirt hem that trails along with it. There are steps too, and from their speed and size and daintiness, he doesn't raise his head to say, "Good evening, Miss Hooper." No reply. Now he looks up, finding her gathering his glass and the miner's, seeing her fine brown furrowed. He sits forward. Not much, just enough to see her better, and to be seen himself. "What's got you vexed?"

She flusters and ruffles and bustles until there are no more distractions to clean up. By then his gaze has gotten to her, and she mutters at him, "You ought be more careful about flaying the shirts off men's backs."

"Now, I don't know; an indecency trial might be worth it, if only to see the look on my brother's face-"

He laughs, silent, and she slaps his shaking shoulder. "Right before they hang you, which is only if you ain't been skinned already by these you see over my shoulder here."

But thugs don't scare him as they do the slip of a waitress. Why, they don't even quicken his blood these days. So he sighs, and says the very cruellest thing he can possibly imagine to say; "Ain't you kind, to think so highly of my skin."

The blush climbs fast out of Miss Hooper's neckline and does not stop until it reaches her hair, and even then it continues to deepen. She averts her eyes, and with a shaking fingertip taps one of the glasses on the tray. "Another, Mr Holmes?"

"Thank you kindly."

She patters away now. Good. Ain't that what she's for? Taking away empty glasses and bringing full ones, ain't that her job? Good. Let her go away. Let her leave him in peace, to wait for the next challenger stupid enough or drunk enough to forget all those who've come before. There'll be plenty of them. There always are. Ain't much else to do in a place like Bakerville. Let Miss Hooper go. She ought to patter right on and on and on to the next stagecoach headed anywhere but here.

It's not quite that Holmes is still watching her, only that he can see her reflection in the dark of the window. She has missed a glass on a table near the door, and performs half a pretty pirouette to pick it up. That next step afterward is meant to turn her around. It doesn't do it quick enough, and brings her spinning into someone just arriving. The reflection isn't too clear, but a gentleman of some sort – he brings up one hand to steady her rattled tray. When the other hand doesn't appear at all, Holmes knows; that hand is on top of a cane, no doubt pushing down hard, supporting a bad leg shocked to shaking by the collision. He takes the briefest, most casual glance and confirms, none of this showing on the man's face. Maybe an extra line to the forehead, a tightening at the jaw, but that's all, and Miss Hooper sees nothing but the smile he puts on for her.

This man, who is the farrier at the livery stables, is obviously a fool. Smile at a woman when all you want to do is cuss every word in the tongue at her, that's a fool's work.

Still, when he hitches up at the bar and tips his hat to Holmes, Holmes tips his hat back. And when Miss Hooper comes back with his drink, her eyes are on the farrier when she says, "Maybe you oughta try drinking _with_ somebody sometime."

It's the very cruellest thing she can think to say to him.

Holmes decides to try it, this foolish business of smiling when you want to do anything but. He forces it on and studies her while he knocks away the amber belt and begins to roll up his baize for the evening. "Why, Miss Hooper," and he lets that semblance of happiness colour his words so that the sound of them is the same discordant music as the glasses and the bottles and the laughter and the feet in here, "and here was me thinking you were a _respectable_ sort."

She turns an even more alarming shade of red than before and does it twice as fast. He picks up his case and leaves her fuming, stamping her foot in that shadowy corner. Let the farrier comfort her. Isn't that what makes those smiles worthwhile? Yes, Holmes thinks and resolves himself to believe it, he has done them a favour this night.

Not feeling like a man who has done a favour at all, he steps out into the stifling night. Without so much as a breeze to lift it, a fine drift of red dust has settled everywhere, gets in everywhere, can't be gotten out of everywhere. Long term residents are accustomed to it. They seem hardly to notice this pernicious invasion. Holmes notices. It bothers him. With the tip of his finger he brushes it out of the creases at the sides of his nose.

There's no one but the Sheriff around to see him.

He tries to get away with the tipping of his hat again. He puts his head down and makes his walk purposeful, determined. Yes, sir, he tries to say, straight home with me. After all, as well as the law know not to venture inside of Hudson's, Holmes knows not to try plying his trade outside of it. The drunks and forty-niners and the ones that think they're smart, those are all fair game. The Sheriff allows that. But if Holmes were to start fleecing the true citizens, well, that'd be the tale of a whole other horse.

He hasn't gotten far when the clatter of the Sheriff's too-large, too-bright spurs catches up and falls into step. They're for show, the spurs. They're a mark of importance and wealth. Holmes has never seen them put to use on a horse. He couldn't give words to why, but he respects that.

"Why is it," he begins, "you always feel the need to walk me home?"

The Sheriff stops whistling and laughs, a deep rumbling chuckle that comes out of places further south, out of dark, wet land full of mosquitoes. "It's the French blood," he replies. "Gives a man an instinct, to know where the trouble's going to be."

"I'm flattered." Where two ways part, Holmes tries to turn out of town. Down that road, up a wooden stairwell on a side street, up to his own rooms. Isn't that what's wanted here? But the Sheriff stands resolutely in his way, facing the other direction. Holmes glances back, over his shoulder. Up a slight incline so it catches all that moonlight, white-painted and just glowing like it thinks it's the Kingdom of Heaven itself, the church sits square and harsh right where he can see. He tosses his head from side to side, making a big show of the decision that was made in an eyeblink. "Ah, it's a nice idea, Lestrade, but don't you think it's a little late to go visiting? Maybe I'll call on him in the morning, after his early services."

The Sheriff's arm winds against his, just tight and for just long enough to turn him around, to start the two of them amiably side by side up the hill. "You are a considerate fellow, Mr Holmes. But really, no need to worry! The pastor has _asked_ to see you tonight. He asked me to watch out for you special, and to send you his way. He asked me, too, to see that you reached him safely."

They continue on, another four or five steps, before Holmes shakes his head. He doesn't stop walking, but turns on his heel and makes sure he's travelling in a direction he likes.

Lestrade stops dead behind him. From the way it colours his words, from having so recently heard the same tone on his own voice, Holmes knows he's grinning ear to ear, "Now where is it you think you are going, hm?"

"Could be the pastor wants to see me. I don't want to see the pastor."

Another step or two. Maybe that's that. Maybe he's getting away. And yes, there'll be a price and tomorrow morning he'll pay it, but right now, maybe he's getting away. But the Sheriff calls out, "Tell me, what sort of winnings are you carrying in that case of yours? I don't mean to pry. I only thought, it would truly be a pity if some low creature were to go back into that bar and talk up loud, how much it might be. Gives me the feeling something just _terrible_ might befall you, no?"

One more time, Holmes turns. The words, _You wouldn't_, get as far as his lips before they almost make him laugh. With a grimace, he closes that gap between them again and goes further, stalking past Lestrade with the case tucked safe under his arm. "Tell me, Sheriff, is it the French blood makes you a corrupt sum'bitch too?"


	2. A Brother's Keeper

It is the pastor's considered opinion that no good man should have so much as a light in his upstairs window at this hour. Good men should be in their beds, at rest before tomorrow can bring another day of fruitful and god-fearing toil. In fact, the pastor hopes most sincerely that all the good men of Bakerville _are_ at their rest, as he sits in the house across from the church, beneath the parlour lamp, and makes notes for his next sermon.

The Sheriff gives only the most perfunctory knock and walks in anyway. He walks further too, on in from the hall to shed the dust from his coat and boots all over the imported rug. The pastor tries not to sigh. It'll give the cleaning woman something more to do than nip at the brandy. "Found him," he announces, and gives a jerk of his thumb, so local, so vulgar, over his shoulder.

'Him' is lingering in the hallway, beating off the dust at the doorstep. At least there's that much gentleman left in him.

But even these few scraps are betrayed and turned to liars when he tromps on inside and settles himself in the chair by the fireplace. "What am I here for?" he demands, and with not one pick more of pleasantry than one may see in those words written down.

Conversely, when the pastor goes on regardless to say, "Good evening, brother. I do hope I find you well," it is spoken with none of the greeting's inherent warmth. It is said in reproach and in instruction, and the sayer is greatly displeased when the hint goes unheeded. He looks pointedly to the Sheriff, still finding himself quite comfortable in the parlour doorway and says, "Good night, and thank you."

He's not a man the pastor would ever accuse of being over-intelligent. There's a moment of confusion, deciding whether or not he's been rebuked. "I had thought," he stammers, "if I were to stay, it might be a little more… _convincing_."

With a slow, quiet nod, "Yes, I realize you thought. Now, goodnight, and my regards to your lady wife."

The Sheriff jams his hat back on before he's so much as left the room, so great is his ire, so low his breeding. "Ain't married," he mutters for his only farewell.

_Ain't_. If there's something thing the pastor just cannot stand about this wretched place, this very farthest spot of spittle the English language managed to shoot out from where the Mayflower landed, it's that awful, nonsensical contraction. Why, ain't even made up out of two whole words he recognizes.

His too-rude visitor sat up out of his chair for this goodbye. He leans around the wing, unashamedly watching the Sheriff's exit. "He had quite the heart to stay and watch. You gonna shoot me? That's about all I can think of would have wound him so tight."

"If I were going to kill you," is the patient answer, "I'd hardly invite an officer of the law to join on in. Nor would you have been given the opportunity to guess what was coming to you."

The gambler laughs, "Big talk…", and undoes the clips on his case, pulling a flask out from under a strap on the base.

"We could, if you wanted, drink like civilized men, with glasses and each other."

"Mycroft, the only thing I _want_ is for you to tell me what I'm doing here so I can go home. What's so important you couldn't let Lestrade deliver the message? Better yet, what happened to all those little Sunday schoolers that run your little notes right to my door? Hell, I don't know that the store could refuse you if you wanted to send me a cable, three streets away-"

"_Language_, Sherlock. Try and remember where you are."

"Oh, God's house is all the way across that street out there, he can't hear me."

"Blasphemy…" This is a lacklustre little note, with barely enough energy to be called a condemnation. If any of this pastor's flock could have heard that, they mightn't have believed it possible. The sweet and forgiving among them might dare to dream he is truly his brother's keeper, burdened under with this surly unbeliever. Those Mycroft has a little respect for might have chosen simply not to hear such an anomaly, and their niggling doubts would only have lasted until the next service, and all the fire and brimstone he raises up daily to scour the wickedness out of them.

But his brother scoffs, "Drop it. You ain't in your pulpit now. Religion is no more a set of beliefs you hold than - "

"The Lord is my sword and my shield."

"Yes, now that marks a little closer to it; a weapon and a hiding place."

"Well, you are on _fine_ form toni-"

The gambler's head sinks down into his waiting hands and all words are stopped. He is too young for the pose, for the expression. If only there were a fire in the grate beyond him, it might not be so dark and might not seem so bad, but he is all in shadow and sighs, "Please. Just tell me what you want."

What else can he do? It's the third time Sherlock's asked for a straight answer. Though God allows for no superstition or magic, there's a power to every third that goes so deep a man might not even notice it happening. And so the Pastor begins, and tells as succinct as he can manage it, that both he and Sheriff have had word from other towns, there's trouble headed this way.

A pack of it, like jackals, is coming over the hill. First, if the rumours are to be believed, comes a young boy who slips quiet around the towns and goes scuttling back like a rat with his report. Behind him then, a wagon, tents, two men and a woman – the tales never stretch to calling them gentlemen and a lady. The latter, in fact, if the tales bear any truth, is a harlot, and having run the last of those out to live with the miners a year since, Mycroft won't have no visiting parties set up shop. "And these men," he says in his explanation, "one of them claims to be a preacher. The other claims nothing, he doesn't speak, but by all accounts this is some heathen witch doctor from the far side of the globe, too many thousand miles from civilization. Between the two, they sell for extortionate sums the muddy expectorate of this foul pagan and pass it off as God's own healing."

"Snake oil," Sherlock mutters. "The tale's old. What's it got to do with me?"

"Not a thing."

Now he looks up. Now he pays attention. Ever the spoiled brat, now that something is being denied him, now he wants it. "Excuse me?"

"All I want is for you to know all of this in advance, so that when it arrives you don't feel the need to go poking your nose in."

All of a sudden, Sherlock is stowing the flask again. He shuts up his case, abruptly stands and turns for the door. "Consider it done," he snaps, but there's more to this, and Mycroft stands to follow him to the door.

"What in under heaven ails you?"

"Not a thing," and Sherlock snatches down his coat from the rack in the hall.

"All I want is for you to be safe, y'hear? I just don't want you to go looking for trouble."

"When have I ever gone looking for trouble?"

A spark of rage, unbecoming to a servant of the Lord, nevertheless kindles in Mycroft feelings and strengths that have been drying out this long time. The resulting fire is short-lived, but fierce, and in its grip he is able to grab the case out from under that protective arm. He knows where and how to hit it to make it pop straight open, and he knows too where the blow must fall to safely uncover the hidden gun. He does it all with a speed and ease that Sherlock is not expecting, and it throws him off balance.

Faced with this evidence, the unequivocal answer given by the gleam on the nickel-plate, he only moves to close up all those covers again and offers weakly, "A body has to take care of his-self, out here in the sticks."

"Just don't ever forget there's a reason we come to be out here in the sticks."

This is too far. This is always too far, and yet Mycroft can never quite keep himself from saying it. It happens rather more often than he likes to admit, this little snap, this little loss of control. It's a raw nerve for both of them. Sherlock generally strikes at it first, but without meaning to. He only glances it, and only – or so Mycroft can believe in his guilty and generous moments – because it already preoccupies him so. His own counter-strikes, however, are thoughtless in a different way. They are a dog's teeth closing simply because there is meat between them, whether that be the leg of a deer or the tender flesh of a toddler. They are hurtful where hurt already reigns.

Picking his case back up from the table, Sherlock will no longer look at the man in the pastor's blacks. He will not, even, look into mirror or the reflection in the dark window, in case their eyes should meet. "You need not worry," he says, every word tense enough to vibrate, like a guitar string. "I have no real desire to so much as set eyes upon the low sort of shyster who preys, not on human stupidity, but on human faith, and who is probably possessed of the arrogance and gall to think the two are the same thing. Nor am I inclined to visit a whore or a witch doctor, and if your stories hold true, the _danger_ of the young boy has probably come and gone already. Now does that set your mind suitably at rest?"

He waits for an answer, like a gentleman. Whether or not he wants one, Mycroft can't say. In fact, he can't say a single word. They've gone from him, all of them, gone back into the books and the papers and sermons, gone and hidden and left him with none to offer.

Sherlock lets himself out, and leaves him alone in the half-lit hallway.


	3. Man And Beast

It's a boy John sees when he arrives at the stable next morning. Plainly dressed, a patient kid waiting with the sort of horse that ain't never patient, that paws the ground and snorts and tugs at the slightest restraint and most of all against the shackle of time, trapped in those awful months between being a mere colt and being a force of nature. Becoming hurts. John's found that to be true of any wild thing, man or beast.

But the kid is good with it. The kid begs no quiet or peace, demands no respect, but keeps firm hold of the reins and one hand, when it is allowed, on the dappled nose. A boy, for all appearances, and it's with a boy in mind that John stops leaning on his cane and takes it up in a fist. But it's a girl, as he gets closer, that he can hear dimly singing to the animal. The tune ain't anything he recognizes but the words might be After The Ball.

"Good morning," he calls from a distance. It might make the kid look up and then he'd have an answer. For now, there's only guesswork.

"Good morning, sir," and he or she jumps to attention, calling the horse to new stillness. But his or her head does not lift enough to show enough face under the hat, and his or her shoulders do not pull enough back to enough push the chest out to truly trust the sack-like shapelessness of the jacket. "And I apologize to meet you so early of a morning. I understand if you're not ready for working yet."

But John sways his head and walks up close. He avoids the kid, but lingers over the horse. The reins are wrapped twice around that small, sunburnt fist; this isn't just a mode of transport or a beast of burden. So often he has to hold back the proper respect due a creature until he's alone with it. There's nothing worse than the staring of an owner who just does not understand. But here, now, the weak sun too young to be stifling yet, this is a perfect moment. The morning lies in a sheen like oil around every muscle contour, every shift in tone, every twitch of that untold power under the skin. Kid must ride like lightning on that back. "Gone turn into a beautiful big animal."

"You ask me, he's too big for his boots already." One of the kid's own boots taps gently at one front hoof. "Didn't get them hooves trimmed but two weeks since. He pulls his shoes when he gets sore, he's gonna split one." That's the excuse John needs to kneel, though that is forever a strange and a painful thing to him anymore. And from that perspective he can look up, and have the confirmation of the smooth curve from cheekbone to chin that this is a girl. But confirmation is all it is. She speaks with all that caring and admonishment, as though her horse put her through all this on purpose, that he remembers too well of his elder sister. She's got a whole sky full of love in her and no one in the world to spend it on but a brute animal. He knows before he looks.

What he couldn't hear, what no one ever could, is the hard, shining mess of pink burning on the side of her neck and face. Naturally it catches the eye. He tries to look away before she can feel it, but no man is as quick as a woman's scars. There's an awful second where she says nothing, and one yet more terrible where she begins most swiftly to say anything. "I want him taken real good care of, and new shoes. I depend on him, see, and I knew this was coming as I was leaving Bartholomew back a ways along the road, and I asked, I asked before I left, where do you know of the best horse-fellas ahead of me and they told me, they said you take a little bend to the south, through Bakerville, and - … Are you alright?"

No. From the kneeling, the time has come to stand, and it's taking a little longer, pressing a little harder upon him, than he likes to admit. It's the early morning, and walking up to her without the stick. He's leaning on it now, alright, so that when she reaches out to help pick him up it's all but done. It's just the early morning. Too early in the day, not warmed up yet, just an old wound smarting more than it ought, because of the early morning. Still, at least the early morning means there's nobody else around to see.

Once he's on his feet again, where she can't see any tremor in him and he can't see any hard old damage on her, they're back at a level. "Anyway, Mister, can you help me out?"

"I can."

But there are a few other things to take care of first, preparations for daily business – a fire to tend, all the renting animals to have fed, the coach to see cleaned up. She knew that when she apologized first. He holds out his hand to take the reins from her, but that only makes her hold on tighter. "Can't I stay with him? I ain't in any hurry, I just don't got nothing else to do 'til he's done."

Yes, she can stay. When there's no other hand that comes in first thing, she can, and leads that dearest friend of hers to an empty stall. There she would sit on the rail and hum again, content to be small and unseen, until all things had run their course. He just doesn't want to leave her to that. While fill and fitting out nosebags, "What do you call him?"

"My, um, my – my uncle, he says not ever to name anything you could be eating someday."

"Oh, so you ain't all on your own, then."

"Most of the time I am."

John smiles where she can't see. "Then what do you call your horse when you're on your own?"

The girl has to preface, to tell him in a thousand ways that it's all strictly secret and no name, because of this pragmatic uncle of hers, is official, but that the beast is named after a gentleman of Scottish extraction she was once all-but-sure she saw disappear under a train one night, only to find him fighting with some woman's husband behind a hotel on the night that followed. A tall tale, certainly, but told sweetly, and it is sweet already to have a young bright thing in the heady, hay-thick place. He asks her questions only to make her talk, the answers aren't important. And when he turns and finds her cleaning the windows of the best coach, he says nothing about it. He'll knock off the price of a shoe, maybe. He's twice as grateful when she climbs inside to sweep out the floor and seat; that's not something he can manage too well these days. She takes off her jacket to do it, hanging it on the open door.

That burning on her neck, there's more of it. The left hand side of her, wherever there's skin, it's gnarled and shining. He looks, while she's in the dark cab, while he thinks he can, until her eyes flash up to him from beyond.

This time, she doesn't shy. Maybe because they're inside, away from prying eyes, or maybe because they've been talking, this time she steps out and says, "Don't pity me."

"I don't." Sympathy and pity ain't the same thing at all.

"Things have got so much better for me, anyway. I couldn't even use this arm last week, used to just hang there like the sleeve was empty. Hell, sometimes I wished it was, the pain of it."

Impossible. Another tall tale. But he's looking at the scars, isn't he? And he's seen before now what burning does, to full-grown adults, to soldiers, to the very toughest people he ever has seen. And ain't she using the arm now? She's got the broom in that hand and twists it with ease, a little dance from left to right, back to check on her bristling horse. It's impossible, the story she's telling, it's another tall tale, but his leg argues against twisting towards her and, possible or not, he finds himself asking, "And how'd that come to pass, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Oh, I don't mind at all. Only thing I ought to be any ashamed of is how it begun. See, it's a terrible thing to admit, but with how I travel and how far I still have to go, I don't make it to church an awful lot. One night, getting late, nowhere around to lay down, I came by a riverbank where a preacher was talking and yelling and pounding on his bible like you never heard in your whole life, all thunder and passion and God's own love. You know the way that I mean? Anyway, he saw me, and he called to me. And there was this oil he was using, and I didn't want him to, I wanted to run away, but he held me, him and this huge big black fella he had alongside him, and he rubbed some of that oil on my arm, and it didn't hurt anymore."

Impossible. John ought to know. He tried all them oils and rubs and liniments, went for a long time believing he just hadn't found the right one of them yet to ease his pain. He nearly did believe her. He turns away to stoke the coals in the forge.

"I know you don't believe me," she says. Behind him, he can hear her rooting around in one of her saddlebags, and then the little scatter of her boots rushing across the floor. "I ain't a greedy person," she says. "The worst of my trials are over. Maybe the look of it might improve if I kept up with it, but that ain't the Christian thing to do now, is it?" He sees only her knotty pink hand, stretching past him, setting a clear glass bottle on the firebricks. He grabs it up on instinct, before the heat can shatter the glass, and tries to refuse the gift, to give it back. But she holds up her hands, far beyond use and says, "You touched it, Mister. Yours now. They call it Regomo Solution. You're gonna wanna know, once you try it."

But he won't. It's kind of her, childlike and kind, but he's gone beyond all those tryings and hopings, and went beyond them quite some time since. Still, she won't take the bottle back, and he puts it to one side, tucked away with the tartar emetic and all the other apothecary type things. Quite a collection of magical healing oils he's got. Kind of her, yes, but that's all, and he forgets it even as she dances away from his back again, tone-deaf mumbling again, _Many's the heart that's aching, if you could reach them all, many's the hope that's vanished, after the ball…_


	4. Strangers

Early, down in Hudson's – still one of those decent hours Holmes has heard tell of and so rarely experienced. It's busier. There's more life in it too, and of a more joyful sort. The real and the honourable people are still round and about. He's so rarely seen it like this. He thought of taking the baize out of his case, setting it out on the usual table in the usual fashion, and he even had his hand on it before he decided it can keep until later. There's nothing on the table in front of him but a glass, half-full and carefully kept, and his drumming fingertips. There's a silver dollar close to it, riding his knuckles, but that's all.

He told himself all day not to do this. It is a foolish waste of time, in his own opinion, to come here early, to suffer the sidelong glances and have to listen to all the endless chatter of town life and gossip and the day's business. It's murderous dull. All day he's been telling and telling, he ought not put himself through it.

How can he insult Mycroft this way? He ought to cower away and hide with face with the shame of it. After all, wasn't it only last night he was hauled up before that venerated brother, like a leg-ironed runner before the judge, and told that trouble was coming? Only _last night_. How can he be so bold, as to sit here like there might be something to see already? How can he spit in the face of his brother's great omnipotence, have so little faith in it as to think Mycroft was only looking _one day_ into the future?

A faithful and a trusting brother would have thought he had but _plenty_ of time. A faithful and trusting brother wouldn't have come here at this otherworldly, _citizenly_ time of the day until next week at the very earliest.

Faithful and trusting would have missed every damn second of the action; the preacher walked in about ten minutes since.

He has come, like any visitor to the town might, asking questions. To listen to him, you might think some of the stories that ran ahead of him like birds scattering over a forest might have been outright wrong as well as too late. He was asking the sort of things that it is said a red-haired boy comes asking before him.

But he asked them loud. He asked them with the accent and eloquence of a cultured stranger, and asked them in such a way as to gain the respect of that formidable old mistress of the bar and the attention of all others. As to what he is, his style of dress gives that away, but it gives them away too loud. Modest cut, sober-black and white, that's not a preacher's self-imposed uniform, it's an actors costume. His buttons give him away. Too bright, too new. A little trick of vanity that complacency allows. Holmes sees it.

So yes, he is a fake, but that was never going to be a surprise.

One of the distinctly limited joys of Holmes' expensive education, he has an example for everything. Seneca was the man that said common folks hold God up to be a truth, wise folks hold him false. The rulers, the wise old bastard said, are the ones that call him useful. And since Holmes has only rarely met a clergyman who wasn't a ruler of some small sort, or thought he was, he has drawn a contentedly biased conclusion from that.

He is, naturally, the only one who's noticed. The down-to-earth traveller has thoroughly charmed even that great lady who keeps this saloon open and peaceful. Why, when he asked if there might be somewhere nearby that he and his companion might eat, Mrs went out back and took the food direct from Mr's lap, now that there were paying customers to give it to.

That companion is one strangeness, Holmes must admit.

The woman ought to be wearing a wedding band on her finger. Whether they're married or not, she ought to be wearing one. It's simpler if she's his wife. They pretend or they do it for the piece of paper or there's some honesty in it, whatever the story, they ought to be married. A preacher needs a wife, and a woman along the road needs a husband. The two protect each other from scandal and calumny, and they get asked far, far fewer questions. And yet, there are no rings. Companion is the word he used. Now, as Holmes watches, they talk in quiet confidence the way he's never yet seen a married couple do. He says something funny and she's got a cruel smile.

That single spark of real honesty, Holmes could almost doubt what he's supposed to know about them.

In that second of hesitation, he makes a decision. He empties the glass in front of him, drops the dollar into his pocket, and picks up his case.

He doesn't make for the main door but slides to his left, past the lonely piano, behind the curtain that backs it. With barely a ripple, he vanishes out of the saloon and into the storeroom. With the heat, all the doors are open. One looks into the house, and he tips his hat to the hungry Mr Hudson. The other opens out to the back, to fresh air.

God comes in the front door, wickedness that's been told to keep its nose out slips off another way. It's called cutting one's losses and it is as much a part of a gambler's trade as a particular deck of cards and dice with the right drill holes in and a loaded gun close by. Sherlock is going home. It's alright if you don't believe it. He almost don't believe it himself.

He manages to get one foot to the dusty ground beyond the door.

A heavy hand seems to be waiting, right there in the air, just at the height of his chest, to push him back inside. Stunned by the suddenness and serendipity, he looks only at the hand for a second before he realizes it's attached to an arm, and the arm is attached to a sheriff. He looks, then, beyond Lestrade, out to the street. "But I'm leaving," is the only murmur that comes to him. "You always want me to leave when there's honest folk around."

The hand stays resolutely where it is, exerting just a little pressure until Holmes falls obediently onto his back foot. It stays where it is even when he turns around, taking up a position just one inch too low down to be friendly on his back, and still keeping up that little push. And yet Lestrade sounds as agreeable and lyrical as ever. "Stay a while. I'll buy a drink, hm? My apology; we were less than kind to each other last night."

'We' does not mean himself and Holmes. Holmes never had any opportunity to be less than kind, or to take any action that wasn't prescribed to him. 'We' is Lestrade and _Mycroft_. One so cruel as to threaten the very package he was delivering, and one so cruel as to ask the other to _leave_.

This is not about apology, or a drink bought. This is about who is sitting out in that saloon and what Lestrade wants to know about them.

Still, the drink bought helps. This time there are two hats tipped to the silent, sedentary Mr Hudson, and they both come back through the curtain. Like a magic trick, Holmes thinks darkly, one steps in and two step out. This time he's forced to sit at the bar itself, with Lestrade looking too obviously at the preacher's reflection in the mirror behind the glasses. He looks from that, to Holmes, back again, back again. Holmes makes a show of blank, wide-eyed stupidity. "What?"

The sheriff's grimace is the most joy he's found in this day. "The _strangers_-"

"Strangers? How would I know who was local or not? I come down here late and every night _somebody_ walks me home. How would I meet ordinary folk?"

It doesn't go over. Not for one second. He didn't expect it to, but he had hoped Lestrade's frustration might build, and allow his pleasure in it to do the same. Nothing happens. He gets a cold glare and the more direct question, "What do you think of them?"

"Nothing much. I think he's any other charlatan and the scurrilous rumours about the lady are probably true."

"What do you base that on? A little wishful thinking, perhaps?"

No. Quite aside from the fact that that's not the sort of wish that fills Holmes' thoughts, there's too much hard evidence to disservice by allowing wishful thinking to enter into it. He bases his opinion upon the loose, carefully careless way she piles up her hair – no self-respecting sect devotee would stand for it. Upon the way her hand will occasionally brush her neck, expecting to find skin, and how it hates the stiff scratch of the high button collar. No ring. No ring. Even the pretence of marriage would be the loss of a certain freedom. Upon rouge and red shoes and, "Eyes."

Lestrade takes a painfully obvious look into the mirror. "What are you thinking? Mexican, Italian?"

"Twixt you and I, I thought French." A pair of undoubtedly French eyes are narrowed at him. "That ain't what I mean. Look how they move."

They pick out men. More than that, they pick them out in the same way and assess them on three key points in the same order each time. She looks for a broad chest and shoulders. Not finding that she moves on. Finding it she glances next at the crotch, and if again satisfied, onward finally to the face. Less a harlot, more a connoisseur, but Holmes imagines explaining that to Lestrade and decides he maybe ought to pick his battles.

Eyes say a lot about her fellow diner too. His are still. Visitors don't have any stillness. They're never comfortable or quiet. They look at everything, twice and three times, never recognizing it, seeing every face just enough to ask themselves if they've seen it before. But these eyes are dark and glassy. They look upon the world like it was a photograph of a life they've lived a hundred times over.

Holmes catches just a glimpse of his own reflection and looks down into his glass instead.

"Sheriff, tell me something. Do you want to ask more questions, and have me answer in words what you could answer yourself just looking at them? Or do you want an honest opinion and we can all be on our merry ways?"

With a wry laugh, "A year and more now, I've known you, and never once knowing you to make a success of an honest opinion. Try it, though. We'll see."

"My honest opinion is that they are frauds, but not in any way like to cause damage. They stay a couple of days, put on their little show, sell a few bottles of river water. Your townspeople will have a good time. Some of the more… _sensitive_ among them might even get some healing, if only out of their own heads. And then the travelling show will do what it does, and travel."

He looks around at the Sheriff, expecting these sage words to have had some effect. Even derision would be an effect. But nothing has changed. The lawman still has a glitter and zeal of imagining terrible crimes, tight nooses. Holmes worries, sometimes, what goes through that man's head, especially when he's looking at the prettier of the two necks on display. "You ain't even heard that, did you?"

"I thought I might ride out round the edge of town. Look and see where they're hitched up, hm? Ride along with me."

"No, sir."

There's still whiskey in the glass, but Holmes pushes it away from him. For the second time tonight, he starts to get up. Lestrade takes hold of his sleeve, missing any arm underneath. "Now, come on. What's the matter with you?"

"It is my brother's honest opinion that I ought to keep away from this."

Lestrade's new grin is meant to be winning. It's meant to be a joke between friends, their little secret. It doesn't go over, not for one second. "And how much heed do you intend to pay to your brother?"

"About as much as I can bear to," and Holmes grabs back his arm. This time, he leaves bright and bold at the front door so he can't be forced back inside. Strange, to step outside and still find daylight. He mutters the last of his answer into the glare of the sun, "And maybe a touch more."


	5. Forged

It should be said, though purely for the purposes of telling an honest story, the livery stables are not situated along any route which Holmes might be following to his own front door. It is not in the interests of honest storytelling to put forth any conjecture why he might have turned in that direction. Why, the only thing out that way is the brow of the hill that shelters Bakerville from the worst of winter's dry squalls. That's the direction the strangers might have come in, but it is _not_ for the honest storyteller to surmise what Holmes might have been looking for out that way. It is for us only to point out what strange luck brought him past those huge gates at exactly the moment great commotion was fired up inside. Rumbling, whinnying, the sound of a man falling and cussing over it.

We _can_ tell you that Holmes intends to keep walking. Such things, he reasons, must be regular occurrences in such a business. We can tell you that he stops anyway, and goes inside.

The horse in question, huge and jet, is still rearing and snorting. Its unappreciated keeper is still on the ground, holding his leg. It must have twisted when he fell. But from how quickly he becomes aware of someone else standing, Holmes knows better than to so much as speak to him. He goes to the horse instead, watching the lash of its head, choosing the spot and the moment to pull it safely back down. The toe of his shoe, entirely by accident, kicks the base of the cane leaning against the front of the stall, and it falls direct and close to the farrier's hand.

He takes his time hushing the beast, asking what it's got to be so riled about. That way, by the time the animal is quiet again and he can turn around, the other man is on his feet. Even though the stall door is closed, the head facing forward, he offers the opportunity, "You get kicked?"

Stubborn or oblivious, the keeper shakes his head, "Just was too close to her when she tossed up her head, is all. Reckon I know what's wrong with her, though." There is too much of a hobble, too much pressure on the cane, when he crosses the floor to a quieter mare. Just as strong and formidable, but softer, and pressing her nose into his palm when it's offered. He leads her by a rope back across, the grand old machine happy to take a little of his weight. He nods ahead at the next trap gate and Holmes pulls it open. Just at his shoulder, the enraged breathing of the other horse seems to calm, just a little. "Misses her sister, see? Two old wagon-pullers. Hell, they're used to being side-by-side. My own fault, in parting them."

"They ain't yours?"

Another sway of the head. "Belonging to visitors, wanting them took care of a night." Now Holmes looks a little closer. He looks past the horses to what they came in wearing. Tooled leather saddles and polished silver fixings, "You oughta seen the fella brought them in. 'Bout the same size and colour as them great ladies."

Remembering Mycroft's stories, "African?"

"Talked like British."

Another inconsistency. Why be surprised? The way word travels explains enough. It's becoming swiftly clear and clearer, the stories Mycroft heard were the stories he was _meant_ to. No truth, only the knowing twists of the dark-eyed preacher and his compatriots, accepting fully that infamy is twice as effective as anything else in drawing a crowd. That's the point, after all, only to draw. Then they've got another job to do keeping them, but the _draw_, that's the real trick.

Holmes wonders if there's a threatened, worried pastor in every town back along the road, hissing little rumours ahead of time, doing all the hard work for the very people they wish would never come.

"You ain't had a boy through here lately, have you?" he asks. Keeping his nose out. All of five minutes ago he had to disappoint Lestrade and himself, because he was keeping his nose out. "Young, orange hair maybe, alone."

"No. But I tell you, I did have a girl by the same description." Holmes laughs; more smart misinformation. Maybe he should have stuck around Hudson's tonight. When that preacher talks, he might actually say something worth listening to. "Forgive me," says the farrier, and Holmes realizes he's stood too long inside his own thoughts, "you're the pastor's brother, ain't you?"

"For my sins."

The farrier puts out a hand. When Holmes takes it, "John Watson."

When he tries to take the hand back, he finds it held a touch tighter. "Don't think it presumptuous of me to offer advice, but that man with the horses, that girl you met before? Don't set no store by a single word they might have said."

"Ain't that a faithless sort of thing to say?"

"My brother would tell you the same."

Watson nods, "Now that you mention it, I expect you're right." He begins to turn away, "Well, consider me advised. But I ought to get to putting out the fire and-"It's that first step. That leg that turned beneath him, it doesn't sit quite straight again just yet, and nearly pitches him down on one knee again. "Damn it." The cane catches him. Still, Holmes decides he isn't going anywhere just yet.

"If you don't mind my asking-"

"Firstly, I do mind," Watson snaps. Then, a little softer, "Second, war."

"Which one?"

Rather than extinguishing the heat of the forge, Watson drops himself into a chair next to it. "Don't matter. They're all the same, all shit. Let me advise _you_, Mr Holmes, the day you come to know that small fact of life is no good day at all. War's a matter of majorities, no more than that. One side kills the other and back again until there's a majority, and that's what they call victory."

Holmes nods along. He couldn't agree more. Watson doesn't need him to say anything, so he doesn't. Anyway, he can't trust himself to open his mouth. Watson doesn't need him, either, to tell him the next great secret, that it ain't just war where that most awful rule applies. He doesn't trust himself to say it simply because he doesn't trust it to be correct. It has been his belief from a very young age, that every day is just the battle of the most against the many, with the few crushed underfoot or hiding underneath. But he's been told too that this belief is his own peculiar illness, that he ought not inflict it on others.

So with nothing else to offer, he sits his case down on the anvil. He opens the lid back to rest flat on pig-iron pincers so that he can pile the contents onto it. It leaves the base clear. There's a little spot, that looks like a pucker in the lining. He pinches it between thumb and forefinger and picks up a small trapdoor. The space beneath is padded, so that the syringe and ampules won't break. It's one of the latter he takes out now and tries to press into Watson's hand.

"No," is the definitive answer. Holmes steps back, but keeps the glass vial on his open palm. Again, "No. I didn't want it on the field or in the infirmary, I don't want it now." And so it's put away again, and the hidden compartment shut and hidden again. As Holmes is about to slip his flask back under its strap, "Now _that_, I won't refuse."

"I wouldn't," he tries. "It ain't real stuff, it's from out at the still. Worse than mor-"

"All the better." Watson's arm is outstretched, eyes turned away, only waiting. His own funeral, after all, so Holmes hands it to him. He swigs and breathes out like fire, "Ain't like morphine at all, 'cept you don't feel the pain no more."

Taking his own taste, paying some attention for maybe the first time, Holmes is derisive. "What's the difference?"

"Whiskey, or any drinking, you don't know you're out of your mind." That has the ring of wisdom about it. Morphine's like looking down at your peaceful self. Somewhere far away there is still pain and the mind still races, and the wall between is so thin you can still see it all waiting to come rushing back. That's what might coerce a man to taking more than he ought, of morphine. What Watson means, that whiskey is different, is that properly applied it prevents one from ever seeing the inevitable sickened future. He looks around now and mutters, "Probably should get away from fire and horses before…"

Before he gets good and drunk.

Holmes shakes his head. "Don't. Travelling bible-thumper down in Hudson's, place ain't gonna be worth a damn to honest drinkers this night."

Disappointment is immediate. Laughter follows gradual behind it, "Somebody ought to go and warn that Miss Adler plays the piano. Ain't none of her great tunes a thing like _Swing Low Sweet Chariot_. I wouldn't bet on her hanging around too long."

"I would."

As would anybody who has ever talked with the woman, and given that that piano is right next to his usual spot – Holmes being as much a part of the entertainment as anything else in Hudson's, he's talked with her at length. The young widow Adler got stranded here when her fool husband went and got himself shot. Fighting over the honour of a woman who, by her own admission, ain't got none she'd fight for herself. She's too good for this nowhere outpost. She ought to be sitting rich on a large portion of gold-speckled land out in California. She believes all this so heartily as to make it almost objective fact. A woman of such self-assurance and decorum would almost certainly be a lady of great standing by now, were she not the piano playing widow of Bakerville.

She'll hang around the saloon tonight. Sure as sunrise, she will. She'll be wanting to find out where them travellers are travelling to, and if there's any room in the wagon.

"And how'd you come to learning that?" Watson asks, when he has explained some more careful version of these truths.

"I came to learning this because Mrs Adler's heart also tells her that _I_ am far too good for this place, and she has drawn in her mind some conclusion from that which I… which I cannot yet fathom, Mr Watson."

A moment of strained and pristine silence passes between them. Then a sputter, and Watson's laughter breaks large and uncontrollable, passing contagious to Holmes until he leans on the anvil for support, rolling with it, and nips from the flask, passes it back to Watson. "And here I thought I had it good," he manages between seizes of it.

"Hell, I'll trade you for horses anyday…" They wobble on the verge of calm for just a moment, "They make more sense to me." And at this they are quite gone, along with the idea of putting out the fire, or leaving for the night, or doing anything other than what they two are already doing right here and now.

It is not for an honest storyteller to suggest anything so ridiculous and out-of-touch as serendipity. No one wise can ever take seriously a tale which invokes so much as the concept of 'fate'. It is only for us to point out, again, that no possible route home brought the gambler past the stables tonight. It is not for us only to force upon a reader, that these two men ought to have met and been friends, if even in this strange and painful way, in any world, at any time, as anybody. That is for us only to hold in our hearts, and _never_ to say aloud or tell to a listening audience.


	6. No Good Christian

Holmes doesn't dream. Not since he was little. Or at least, none that he ever remembers. But there are times, like this morning, when he wakens suddenly or is wakened by something, that he thinks he might have. A hole in the memory, something that must have happened down in the dark, one ugly second where he hovers between there and here, between unknown and familiar.

And then the noise that woke him comes again, the sharp, insistent rapping at the outside door.

Now he's here, and it is too, too familiar. His eyelids stick like they're holding him back from a fight, telling him none of this is worth it. The rapping happens for a third time and he starts to tease them apart. It feels awful. Feels ungrateful, but his entire body is fighting so hard to keep him where there's peace, contentment. He hauls himself up from his armchair and falls towards the door.

The moment he opens it, he tries to shut it again. Mycroft puts out his hand and grabs the edge, but a few bruised knuckles, maybe a broken finger, that's not going to do him any harm, is it? He can preach about it. He can tell all about the cruelty of man against man. He could read them Cain and Abel, he's good at Cain and Abel. He thunders through that one like there ain't a single logical inconsistency in the whole damn thing, telling all about that god-fearing martyr laid low by his brutal sinner brother. Which has never been exactly how Holmes read that tale, but then he was only ever looking at words on a page. Every good pastor ought to know, the words aren't a tenth of it, compared with how you tell it. Yes. A broken finger is exactly what Mycroft needs. Why, it would be a favour to him.

But speed and strength just are not present this morning (or, judging by the sun coming through the window, afternoon). Sherlock falls onto his back foot as Mycroft pushes on inside. "You look like you've been dead and back," he mutters.

Sherlock ain't awake enough to say exactly how, but he's pretty sure that's blasphemy. His opportunistic brother forgets himself, from time to time, particularly when he gets disgusted.

Mycroft removes his hat and coat, maybe expecting them to be taken. They aren't, and he throws them over the arm of Sherlock's chair when he moves on to taking a seat. Holmes looks at the shape of him, those outside suggestions around the edges. That place is warm. That place is where he just woke up and it was comfortable, and he imagines it cooling and hardening now, turning against Mycroft like glowing iron plunged into a water barrel. He doesn't go in right away, but turns towards the tiny kitchen instead and sets some water on to boil.

"Man ought to be ashamed," Mycroft calls through, "lying asleep 'til this hour of the day, and in such a state." Since Sherlock was seventeen years of age, he has never once had a single conversation with his brother where Mycroft couldn't think of something he ought to be ashamed of. Experience has toughened him, created a sort of shell around him. It keeps the shame held tight close to him on the inside and on the outside it allows Mycroft's proclamations to roll off with relative ease anymore. "Stood outside knocking for my own brother, in broad daylight. Downright embarrassing."

"You'll forgive my reluctance. Last time I saw you twice in three days was when that schoolteacher had been murdered."

"And I have _not_ yet forgiven you for _that_, make no mistake."

Even in the act of making coffee, comforting in itself because it means the drinking of it is close coming, Holmes drops everything and rushes back to where he can be seen. "You were going to hang the wrong man."

"And what did that wrong man go on to do?" Holmes falls silent and drifts back to the kitchen, chased by a list of charges he's heard recited a number of times – robbery, theft of livestock, house-breaking, assault. It makes no difference. It never has, and no matter how many times it should be decried to him, it never will make any difference. The man in question did not kill the last Bakerville schoolteacher back in May. Still, Mycroft misses the same point he's always missed and ends, "And would that wrong man have gone on to do all these things had he been hanged?"

There ain't no point in fighting him, and even if there were Holmes is too tired and too preoccupied with chewing some of the furred, foul-tasting coating out of his mouth. "All I mean to say, you're choosing to come visiting here usually does mean I'm in some degree of trouble."

"Oh, not yet, not yet…" Holmes thinks on that one, pouring coffee so dark and thick it ought to line out his insides like bitter tar, another shell burnt into him. He tastes it still so scalding that he breathes out steam, carrying it sheltered against his chest back through. There is only that one armchair, currently occupied. With no other shadows to hide in, he has to drop down the shade to stand by the window. "I hear tell you were down in Hudson's last night."

"That ain't such a stunner."

"You saw them." A statement, not a question. Mycroft's mouth is open to say more when he finally turns to look, and finds his brother sipping from the delicate cup. That freezes him, widens his eyes, lips parted in shock and distaste.

"…Sorry, were you expecting one too? Pot's right on in there, you help yourself now, brother."

A disbelieving little shake of the head and Mycroft goes back to what he began with, "I want to know what you thought of them."

"You told me not to think, and I didn't think. Ain't you just too proud?"

"Oh, I would be, only that that man _Lestrade_ transpires to be more than useless. Why, you'll hardly dare believe, but he wound up _entertaining_ two of them last night."

Holmes laughs. Small at first, fighting it in fear of hurting Mycroft's feelings. Then the utter foolishness of that notion occurs to him, and he laughs for that as much as for the gullible sheriff. "I dare believe. Further, I dare hazard that the Sheriff thinks them warm and friendly folk, more honest than they're painted, that he has learned a great deal about them and not a word that _you_ would believe to be true."

"That is about the size of it."

"And what if they _are_ warm and friendly folk, and never said a dishonest word to Lestrade?" This is Mycroft's question, and he has already asked it. He will not condescend to ask it again, nor to do any more than study his brother until his opinion is more forthcoming. "Of course they ain't. But I figure they must be pretty good at seeming so; Sheriff was ready to build himself a whole new gallows special for the occasion. Guessing they need him on side, so they can do their pitching and selling unhindered."

"_Not_ unhindered. _I_ shall hinder them." _I_, he says. _I_, and Sherlock has heard it said that way before. _I_ is a broad and general term for how Mycroft thinks of himself broadly and generally. _I_ does not often mean than the pastor himself intends to lift a single finger in the pursuit, except to point others in the right direction. He lifts it now and points at Sherlock. It's only for a very brief second, and he treats it as an accident, meaning to point out the window behind him, but the pause, the precision, it's all too specific. "They claim to be holding some sort of _service_, if you can bear to call it such. Out by the milestone on the way into town. Near, in fact, where their bodies ought to be swinging, and with any luck still could be. Around sunset, I hear. Of course, no good Christian shall be in attendance."

"Oh but that don't mean I can't go, right?"


	7. At The Hanging Place

The preacher and his compatriots have built their makeshift stage with its back to the hanging place. Safe to assume it's easier for them to do their lying and selling without it glaring down in front of them, and their structure blocks it from view for anybody who might be thinking ill of them. They are built, too, with their backs to the west. The dying day is thrown up red behind them, warm and welcoming, somehow sensual. When dark falls the moon will rise right over them, and give them their spotlight. These are careful shysters. This is performance.

Holmes stands back, lingering at the side of a cart that might have brought a late shower of workers in from the mines. Had he been earlier, he might have got some real investigation done. He'd like to get behind that stage and see where this odd gang stand in their preparations, how they go about that. Then again, why ought he investigate at all? Mycroft will only think it was done for his benefit, a hypocrisy Holmes could hardly stand, and anyway, he didn't get here earlier. He got here so that he couldn't hardly move to the front of this crowd with a knife or a lawman's star on his jacket.

If no good Christian is in attendance, then there is no good Christian in Bakerville.

He is surveying the crowd, counting up faces he recognizes, when one steps up by his side. "Good evening, Mr Holmes."

He glances sideways. "Mrs Adler. All alone?"

She takes this opportunity to wind her arm through his, drawing close to his side. "Deliver me from scandalous rumour. You can be my chaperone." He reaches over and unwinds her again, placing her a safe half-step away. "You ain't no sport at all."

"Don't you have a job to go to?"

"Hudson's is shut." Words he's never heard before, a fact he's never dreamt of, but she nods when he looks round in shock. "Nobody to serve. Nobody in the whole building except the old man, and you know he can't get out of that chair. Missus is here somewhere, her and that little mouse she hides behind the bar."

Miss Hooper. Miss Hooper at a thing like this? Somehow Holmes can't make it match up in his mind. A sweet girl, yes, quiet yes and yes, as Adler says, a mouse, but… But she has always seemed to him to have a sensible head on her shoulders. But she's down in that mass somewhere, along with her employer. He hasn't worried until now. Until now this hasn't meant an awful lot to him.

"Too little happens in this town," is Adler's opinion on it. "Everybody's turning out just because there's something to turn out for. That said, don't look like much, does it?" She tells him she's been to revivals all over the country and seen some of them dressed up prettier than cathedrals. The bare stage in front of them don't over-impress her.

"I don't think the revival's the main event."

"Then what is it?"

A means to an end, but there isn't time to tell her that. In synchronicity with the small and unassuming stage, the dark-eyed preacher walks on in the small and unassuming way. Still, somehow, silence falls. It comes on slow at first, but sinks, total and so deep and utterly without explanation, except that this man at the front is waiting for it. He asks without a word and still they provide.

Addressing that man and the idea of him, and nobody else, Holmes mutters, "Who are you?"

Adler rolls her eyes. "I reckon, you fall quiet round about now, you might hear him tell you, alongside everybody else…"

The name he gives is James Moriarty, but he doesn't linger over it. Matter of fact, the very first thing Holmes notices, he seems determined to keep himself out of it. It ain't the usual. He talks out, this man, at all the people gathered to listen. There's no effort to be the focus of their attention. There isn't, arguably, any attempt to make God the focus of their attention.

Matter of fact, it is Holmes' deduction that the preacher is determined to turn the mind of each listening man woman and child exclusively upon itself.

"It does a heart good," he says, "to see all you good people turned out here this evening, does a heart good. Why, we just come, not two days' ride, from Bartholomew? Honest, a man could lose his faith amongst _those_ people. I never did meet so many closed, hard hearts in one town. A dear friend of mine, you'll meet her right soon, she wanted to turn back. Pack up the wagon and turn tail back east. Was her opinion we'd gone beyond God, our here at the frontier, beyond God. Those were her words, beyond God. But let me tell you, ain't no place beyond God. Man can say what he likes and call anyplace his own discovery, but was God put it all here to begin with. Ain't no place beyond Gof. And it's a town like this that proves it, when so many warm and open-minded folks should all come out together to hear his word and feel his hand and share his joy amongst their brothers and sisters. And I want to start out right now by thanking you for that. That's what gives us the strength to keep going. We that have met the Lord as he walked barefoot along the hard way and who have accepted our mission from him, you are our staff, and it is our honour to serve you. Out, in that direction there behind me, is further and further for us to keep going, and into Godless land, to bring the Lord back where he's needed. And provided there are good, good people like you to push us on, we'll be able to do that. Ain't no place beyond God so long as he has friends like you and I thank you, I thank you truly."

And even now, there are grins and joyful laughter spread out all over, and the first happy cries of the names of the Lord, of amens, of exhortations to go right on and preach that holy word.

Not a one of them notices, ain't been one speck of holy word preached yet.

Adler, by the by, is gone. Adler heard the word 'California', when it hasn't even been uttered yet. She heard the implication of it and everything that dream had ever meant to her and every word of her future getting closer again and heard it all at once and disappeared to worm her way close. She'll be in the front before a miner could spit, arms folded on the edge of the platform, shouting louder than anybody else.

The craze and crying and Praise-his-name continues in the same vein, growing larger, clawing deeper into the heart of the assembly. It goes on for an hour, driving them to frenzy. The parable of the fig tree is briefly mentioned. No Cain and Abel. No Abraham and Isaac. No, in fact, of any of the tales contained between the hard covers of the Bible the preacher repeatedly pounds upon like a drummer keeping time which do not quite morally add up.

A most intelligent craftsman, this Moriarty, to avoid anything that might cast the slightest shadow upon the rapidly swelling euphoria. The light may be fading above them, but it's growing out of the eyes and the smiles and out of what some might term the souls.

The woman is introduced, as a sister who fell and has clawed her way, hand over hand, back to the light and the favour of the Lord. It's a terrible, tragic tale of a runaway marriage, a fall from grace across the Mexican border, a fatal illness. But it ends with a miracle, and the woman took up her bed and walked.

Lies, all of it. There's no trace of Spanish anywhere in her speech. No disease has ever raged through her; weakened bones twist, ravaged skin scars. And the idea of this creature having left behind her former wickedness and carnal lust just doesn't take when Holmes tries to apply it. But the crowd accepts her as the shining example of salvation she is held up to be

Salvation. Moriarty preaches a saving sort of a God. And when the town's own pastor has been condemning so many to the fires of the pit for so long, it is a welcome change. Salvation freely and willingly given, waiting for all who will only reach out and take it. A caring and fatherly God, a shepherd to the flock, he does not cast out the wicked but counsels them with understanding, returning them to their own hearts and the kingdom of heaven… Holmes could go on. He could go on for hours, and more surprising still, none of these are direct quotations of the preacher. These are the words and phrases that build up on their own volition in him, just from listening. And if that's what happens to a man with no more faith in the divine than he has in the intelligence of the masses, what on earth is going in all those tiny minds spread out between him and the stage?

Miss Hooper is smiling. Maybe she wasn't, up until now. Now he sees her and now she's smiling. When the wildest of the hallelujahs is allowed to fade and the clapping dies a little, she waits with bated breath the same as anybody else to hear what may come next. Moriarty's eyes light on her, if only for the briefest of seconds, before he moves thinks on to their final stage.

Mycroft's sources told of a great African chieftain. In this, finally, they appear to have been correct. The man invited through the back curtain now is surely no less than a giant, dressed in a curious mix of decent local and beaded savage. His bare chest is approximately as wide as one of his arms is long. He draws a few whistles of disbelief, a few nervous laughs. Miss Hooper, for her part, averts her eyes, fanning herself violently.

Everything about him seems right, at least on the surface. Then the preacher refers to this noble-featured fellow as 'Tiger-Man'. It's an easy name to take, to remember, to repeat, to attach in the mind of the image of such a man and hold in the heart forever. It works very well, as a name for a character in this little performance. But Holmes knows, and he believes Moriarty probably does too, there sure as hell ain't no tigers in Africa. After that the inconsistencies come thick and fast, and everything cracks and falls around them.

For instance, the Tiger-Man appears with a carved bowl full of what ought to be the strange and exotic botanicals that make up the miracle liquid. Moriarty has a way of phrasing it that separates it from witchcraft, brings it back to Jesus. He says the Lord put forth heavenly healing on earth, but he made of puzzle of it. He took it apart into pieces and he has given the secret to these selfless few the crowd can see before them. It is their Christian duty to share what they know. But the pieces of this puzzle look awful fresh for things that are supposed to have been brought in from that darkest continent. Those pale blue flowers, sitting mysterious and decorative on top, they look not dissimilar to a particular sort of periwinkle that grows along the road into town.

"Now," the preacher declares, before anybody could make any mention of this strange, intercontinental twinning, "there are other men, strangers to Jesus, and they'll come through your beautiful town here, as I have. As I have, they will talk to you and bring you hope and joy and the knowing of Christ. They'll recite scripture, yeah, brothers, they'll recite. Word-perfect. But we know, don't we, we _all_ know, even the devil himself can recite. Every one of us knows the devil can recite and he frequently does. The devil will singing you God's own verse and twist them and he'll make you think devil thoughts by them. I cannot do that."

Quite against his better judgement, and he can feel his brother's elbow jab his ribs as sure as if the man were next to him, but Holmes feels a smile start to pull at his mouth. Just pulling, not doing anything for now, but pulling.

"I can't, as others will, call up some cripple wretch from amongst you and make him walk. If only. If _only_! But it ain't my place to perform miracles, nor that of any other man, and should you see some of these preachers raise the lame to walk, I urge you, go again the following night and check that the next night's cripple ain't the same as the last."

Laughter. Just a ripple of it. Nonetheless, it's laughter, indignant and low and heady with good citizenship, all agreeing with him. Any disappointment they might have been beginning to feel, it's gone, swept away by the opportunity to be righteous, to be _better_ than the low sort that would have turned out here hoping to see healing. Yes, sir, Moriarty raise them to laughing.

"I can't do that. I can't offer no miracles. Instead, brothers and sisters, I offer you a solution –" and there is another burst of laughter to see him take out a clear glass bottle from his pocket and hold it up, "- specifically, this solution. Tiger-Man here calls it by the name 'Regomo'. Us that don't speak his language can't make much sense of that now, so I'd encourage you all to call it whatever you may so please. Coming through South Carolina they were calling it the water of St Francis. A good lady of New Orleans that had the cancer in her gut, she called it her Salvation.

"Why, just as we came this way, a young girl passed us on the road, burned all over. Horse kicked over a lantern in the barn where her grandfather was working, she went in to help him out of there. And this young girl, she was riding out to bring her brother back from a gold mine out west to take care of the farm now no one else could. And this young girl, her arm was hanging down at her side, limp as if the sleeve was empty. Just once, just _once_, she used this here oil and she looked up at me and she said, "Mister, I can feel an itch in my fingers." She didn't call it nothing. She couldn't, for all her joyful crying and how she held to me. Did she pass through here? Anybody see her?"

"Oh, please," Holmes mutters. Things had been getting so interesting. And now this old trick, to plant a tale and give some some spinner the opportunity to be the centre of attention just by picking up everything he's just said, it is too, too-

"Me! I did."

The clear, sober voice of John Watson, down somewhere closer where Holmes can't see. Holmes hisses like he's just been cut. "Damn it, didn't I tell you what this was?"

But John ain't paying him no mind, not one shred of it. He's caught, and calls out, "Just yesterday morning."

The preacher's too smart to make a big something out of it. There's nothing to tell the whole gathered crowd. He keeps his voice only just loud enough to be heard, and only confirms that the girl passed through and was still alright.

Part of Holmes wants to leave now. Part of him wants to call out and tell this shower of idiots just exactly what they're buying into, how smart the line is and how toxic the bait.

There is just enough of him left over to keep those two parts in check and hold them quiet. He needs to linger, though not for much longer. There isn't a whole lot more talking gets done before the woman brings out a crate of matching (if slightly smaller) bottles and begins to exchange them for coin. The preacher seems to pay no attention to this, he keeps talking and distracting and leading. But there are people making their way towards the supposedly-reformed harlot, and Holmes is one of them. The density of the gathering makes it more difficult than he'd like. She sees him from a mile away. So does Moriarty, following in little glances than might be accidents and yet patently are not.

Just as Holmes gets close, he briefly kneels to the edge of the platform and whispers something in the woman's ear. She casts out an apologetic smile at anybody close by, hitches the crate up against her hip, and turns away.

"Excuse me," Holmes calls, loud as he dares, "pardon me."

"Oh, darling," she sighs. There's a toss of her head when she turns, unbecoming of a woman devoted to her God. "Ain't a thing I can do for you. He's just told me, we ain't got but enough to send back along the road to those that need it most. Why, there's a lady we're still taking care of from right back-"

"Please," he says. "Try and understand-"

He cut off her tall tale. She, with no pretence of honesty or belief, cuts off his. "Tell me, Mr…?"

"Holmes. Sherlock Holmes." He ought not have said that; the reasons aren't exactly clear to him, but from the way her eyes light, he knows, he ought not have said that.

"Mr Holmes, what is it ails you, precisely?"

"My heart," is what he tells her.

Another misstep, another immediate regret, because it calls up another flash in her eyes and the touch of a hard smile. "Why, hon, there ain't nothing for what _you_ got except…" A catch in her breath, the tip of her tongue hanging on the tip of her most pointed tooth; but then suddenly she's serious again. God comes back and bows her head down for her. "But prayer, sir. I suggest you talk to your brother first, if you don't feel you can go directly to the Lord. Excuse me."

She turns again, and sways away, out of sight around the stage. The rattling last of those too tempting bottles go with her, ringing with the crowd's applauding, and her soft, taunting chorus of Amazing Grace is drowned to all but her and Holmes.


	8. Every Word

Not too much later, when all the hands have been shaken and the praises kindly borne, when the field is clear and any shady spots around it have been carefully watched for any that might linger, the Tiger-Man sighs. He shrugs, rolling off his straight-backed nobility and slipping back into a comfortable slouch and removes the strings of wooden beads and feathers from around his neck. This morning, when he spoke with the farrier, he made some small attempt to disguise how he sounds. Now does no such thing and, still stretching that regal crick out of his neck, yawns, "Bloody hell…" and wanders behind the stage.

He finds the woman in the back of the wagon with a crate of fresh, empty glass bottles and the lockbox full of those few special things they add to make the magic happen. She passes him a great huge pitcher, "Fill that for me, would you?"

"Should try bloody drinking some, if there's something the matter with your legs…"

"Tiger, hon, I'ma get through two or three more of them there before we catch up what got sold tonight, never mind what'll be expected of us to sell tomorrow, and I got me an engagement this evening I need to polish up for, so you'd better-"

The curtain edge is yanked back hard, out of the Tiger-Man's hand and there stands the preacher, late snuck up on them, pointing one stern and accusing finger at the lady. The endless frustration of her, of repeating this one thing over and over, makes him loud, "_No harlotry_!"

"James, how many times I done told you? Ain't harlotry; it's happiness. Anyway, it ain't that sort of engagement."

Jim really could care less what sort of an engagement it is at all. His outburst was instinct, just the same trigger as ever pulled and making the same big bang. His real thoughts are a long way from here. Or at least, he hopes they are. His thoughts are with that silent stranger that stood at the back and did nothing but stare. Never smiled, never sung, never stretched out his hand for heaven's light, only stared. His thoughts are with that man and he hopes, then, that his thoughts are a long way away.

Men with long noses don't bother him. They've dealt with that sort before. Generally, once Tiger-Man breaks said-nose, the bones of it set a little shorter. They've dealt with the sort that crept back here when there was no one to watch the wagon and went after their stock. Generally, Tiger-Man breaks a little more than the nose on that type. They've dealt with a few well- and ill-meaning sorts that wanted to scream and shout and wave their arms for one reason or another. And they're still on the road and working, so that oughta tell you something, wouldn't you say?

No, Jim Moriarty ain't afraid of men with long noses. He just ain't never met one that was so reserved and calm about it all. He's never met one that stood at the back and never so much as flinched.

Jim's the one who flinches when the woman leans out of the wagon, "He's the pastor's brother."

"Who is?"

"The one on your mind. The one you made me stop selling for and honest, if that ain't a sign of oncoming apocalypse, I don't know what is."

"Paris, sweetheart, don't ever pretend you know a thing about my mind."

She mumbles that she doesn't, wouldn't dare, and the wry little slight goes unpunished. Beneath and above her notice and too quick for her or any other being, that mind of his is working. A pastor's brother, and that Sheriff last night, once he had a whiskey down him, he talked up a genuine storm regarding the church leader of this here town. Jim's reputation preceded him here. It did good work too, as it generally will. It laid an easy path.

But it could have been different. Had that Sheriff been a stronger and less suggestible man, his reputation could have choked the way with thorns.

It was suggested to him that the pastor Holmes might be best avoided. Jim agreed. But if the pastor ain't content to avoid _him_ then, well, something perhaps ought to be done. At least, the loaded pistol ought to be held in readiness.

"Paris, what's this engagement of your'n tonight?"

A cough of joyless laughter, "I have, just this moment, finished describing to you the nature of my-"

"Yes, but you were talking, and generally when you talk I prefer to listen to the music in my head as anything you might have to say. Now tell me again."

"Dark-haired woman, one that come down the front and looked like she'd wash your feet with her tears if you were so inclined. She's one of them pretty young widows like you make out of me and she has invited a kindred spirit for supper."

That dark-haired woman started her evening standing at the back, next to the man who stared. Talking too, right close by him, shaping her body ways that are familiar to Jim. The reason they're familiar is standing right behind him now, watching the Tiger-Man come back with the pitcher. He turns to her, "I want you to find out every word there is about the pre-existing man of God for the township of Bakerville, and every word there is about this brother he's got. What's his name, by and by?"

"Oh, now, I know this, I do, he told me. Odd name, too, I ought not have-"

He puts a stop to all that with one outstretched hand. It'll keep. It'll torment him, but it'll keep. She can tell him every word when she hauls them all back.

Adler, in the meantime, is preparing for a visitor. It doesn't happen all that often. No man can set foot over her threshold, married or single, not without inviting slander. And so many have, nevertheless, attempted it, that no decent woman dare visit either. That's why she had to get to that miraculously healed Mexican bride before the rest of the town could, before she could be scandalized and learn to refuse. Adler had to be the very first to extend a welcoming hand.

She has raised and dimmed the lamps a dozen times, trying to find the right light for a quiet, respectable evening. It doesn't come natural to her. She catches her reflection in the dark window and pauses, rolling a curl between two fingers. The fingers of her other hand find that red, settled dust on the windowsill, drifted in from outside. It stains her skin until she brushes it off, fast and disgusted, on her skirt.

This town drowns in that dust. She steps outside in the morning and cannot breathe for it, and comes back to these rooms and finds it full of it, almost a weight, almost bearing against the door to trap her in or out, burying her in that endless red filth and the suffocating heat.

Irene Adler ought to have a goddamn mansion by now, built on the side of one hill, looking across at the exploded face of another where a hundred men and a hundred again spend their days drawing up gold for her out of nothing. She ought to have horses, dozens of them, and a favourite to ride out of the edge of her own vast tracts of land, and from those edges she ought to be able to watch the nodding of wells drawing up black crude and making her richer and richer still. Sure, maybe she might be been sharing all of this with a husband, but husbands die. Adler knows this all too well. Husbands die all the time, and they leave to their wives whatever their social position might have been in the moment just prior to their dying.

The moment just prior to his dying, the late Mr Adler was known as a stranger and a drinker and a hothead and a duellist and a fool, and if he were to walk in at the door right now, Irene would kill him herself for granting her such a legacy.

And so she straightens herself and the room, prepares a simple supper. Tea, too. That awful prerequisite, in heat like this there must still be tea between host and guest, and between two ladies especially. She grabs the bottle of gin from the sideboard and closes it away in the cupboard underneath, out of sight.

Here, at last, is an opportunity. Not so simple as a stagecoach; she could catch one of those every second day except a Sunday, and ride on out. She could strike and try it for herself, struggle her own successes out of nothing. But Irene has never done that because she has always known this day would come.

Moriarty represents something more awkward, more elusive, but ultimately more rewarding if she can pull it off. Not just a ticket to California, but a way of arriving with support and protection. She'll have a purpose, however false and selfish it might be. She'll have the auspices of respectable people to protect her. Depending on what the preacher's plans are when he reaches that brighter ocean – they say it's bluer than the old grey Atlantic – who knows? Maybe he and she will stick at it. The woman, she said her name was Paris, didn't have a ring on her finger. Ain't nothing prevents Irene from…

But these are plans too far in the future. Tomorrow morning is too far ahead to be thinking. There's only tonight. There's only this first conversation, the weighing and measuring. Then, in the morning, she can start and make plans. Tonight, Irene just needs to concentrate on the information, the basics. She needs to know about Moriarty and where he stands. She needs to pick up every word of it, string them like beads and shore them up tight against her heart. Every word.


	9. A Liar

In many ways, Miss Hooper's morning bears comparison to Mrs Adler's evening. The fixing and straightening of small, private rooms is the same, and the careful keeping of one's self and appearance is at least comparable. The differences come with the reasons; Molly Hooper doesn't qhave one, especially. She takes care of herself in such precise and modest fashion because she takes care of herself, not to fend off calumny or curry favour.

It follows, then, that neither calumny nor favour so much as occurs to her when there is a knock at the door of her little shotgun house. A flutter of anticipation is the only deviation from her blithe innocence as she goes to see who could be calling.

The pane of glass in the door is of a warped and twisted sort that offers her privacy inside. It twists the caller outside into a gnarled shadow, drawn up taller than he ought be and dragged out wider, curling his collar around one of its contours. It's nothing that looks like a human being in the slightest. And yet Molly knows who's calling. The curious flutter turns to a terrified seizure of the heart, wound too tight to beat for too-long seconds. He can't be here. What could he possibly want with her? It's alright in the saloon. She can say what she likes when she's clearing his glass away. She can tell him off when he's about to get himself beaten or hanged or worse, that's alright. Why, that is Miss Hooper's _job_ down there, to prevent aggravation where she can. But what upon God's green earth does he want with her at home in the morning?

Her hair and her buttons and her skirts and all the things she made so sure of already, she checks again, before she realizes that while she is paralysed in the hall, he is on the doorstep, and every passing second there's a much greater risk of his being seen lingering. She patters forward quick and unlocks the door.

"Why, good morning," she manages to say, and tries to add, "And what can I do for you?" But none of that gets out, and certainly not in the hard, no-nonsense way she wanted to say it. Sherlock Holmes lowers the arm she propped up to block the doorway with one hand and slips past her into the safety of the hall. He checks outside before he shuts the door. "What do you think y-"

"A curtain might have twitched across the way there, but I reckon your reputation's pretty safe, Miss Hooper."

"_Get out_!"

"You ain't even asked what I'm here for!"

"I _tried_," but Molly had only the vehemence for that one outburst. She's not a vicious or an angry woman and anyway, he's inside now. If she keeps trying to yell at him it'll just come off as whining. She rolls her eyes and walks out of the hall. A little toss of one hand grudgingly offers him a seat, like a hostess should.

She has not ever before thought of him sitting in the chair by her fireplace, nor of him leaning out of it to stoke the coals some cool evening at the far end of the year, nor of his hitching the chair a little closer to hers so that he can take her cold, bare foot to warm between his, nor of never even looking up at him during all of this, but being unable to hold down her smile as she pretends to still be reading her book, and to have not turned a page in five minutes or more, to be so wrapped up in the thinking of him. No, sir, she never has and she doesn't now, Miss Hooper allows no such scandal to sully her thoughts, not for a second.

"Really, Mr Holmes, not wishing to be ungracious, I'm rather busy today, so if you might-"

"Too busy to save lives?"

_Certainly_, she has never thought of his saying that. "I beg your pardon?"

"Well, it's a possibility. First things first, we have to assess the scope and scale of a criminal enterprise, and gauge the need for justice, so-"

Her eyes close. Her hand, entirely unbidden, lifts to her forehead in that ever-so-mannered way her mother and maiden aunts have taught her. "Wait…"

He doesn't wait, or so much as miss a beat, "Oh, refuse if you like. You ain't my first call this morning and there's other people I could try. But Miss Hooper, with everybody that turns me down I find myself forced a step closer to asking the Sheriff for help and no man interested in unadulterated and possibly inconvenient truth ought to be driven to such an extremity."

Words, words, so very many words that they stop making sense. Molly drifts, and sinks down into the chair opposite (where she would be reading, or casually dreaming with her head on its side while he practices – he plays the violin, don't you know?) Her face between both hands now, she mumbles, "I don't understand."

He breathes in deep. Finally; feels like the first time since he crossed through her door. A brief pause, just enough for him to remember he's explaining this to her for the first time. She sees the way that goes through his head, a conscious effort to be aware of her. He's already tried telling the tale to somebody else. Telling it again grates him. But he breathes in deep and she tries to be attentive when he breathes it out again, "You went to see that preacher work last night."

"Yes. So did you."

"So did a lot of people. And unlike us, a lot of people were able to make purchases."

This? Surely this can't be what's got him so riled? That brother of his, she'd bet any money, this is the pastor stretching out to work. She'll admit a little surprise in this; she hadn't thought Holmes would be so easily manipulated. There's something almost sweet in it, that fraternal weakness. Why, just imagine dragging him round to that other door Christmas Eve. She imagines it all too well, his protests and couldn't she just bring it and they weren't staying more than a minute… and then sitting long, right until the pastor had to go give his late service and-

Before she can spiral quite, quite out of control, "It works, Miss Hooper."

It's hyped-up holy water. "…Come again?"

"It works and not just in folks' heads. The little Frank boy's had a fever all week. Woke this morning and it was gone." Molly begins to shrug. A coincidence. Chickenpox or something he caught swimming in the river, a kid's fever has to break sometime. "There's more. Vanishing headaches, eased gut trouble, improved complexions and better energy… Miss Hooper, good health is breaking out all over. Mycroft just thundered out the old man sends the wires for suggesting that liquid may even be an aphrodisiac-" Molly's shock catches in her throat. She tries to cover the little gasp with coughing, but, "I apologize, but from a medical perspective it's still a symptom."

"A medical per- What would you know about a medical pers…?" She trails off; it has just occurred to her, that yes he might be sitting in that chair she picked him out for, but he ain't about to reach across and touch her hand. His fingers won't tangle briefly in her hair if he gets up and passes her. He's in the chair but not in the way or the mood or the capacity that she ever desired. Molly stiffens her back and shakes the last of the stupid, childish questions out of her head, "What do you _want_?"

A sample, is all. He explains it to her. His suspicions were roused worst by their refusal to sell to him. So smooth, seeing him coming from so far away, he says they are far too practiced at protecting themselves to be honest. "Besides which, if anything so effective and miraculous could be made by a man alone, it would have been discovered long before now, and it would be common knowledge, not divine inspiration."

Molly stands, and walks away to the bookshelves on the far wall. She touches nothing, but studies the spines. There's no placing it, but in the course of this conversation she has heard something vaguely familiar. Could just the story of one or any con artist in the whole of this long stretch of westward country, could be. But she reads the titles of collected volumes nonetheless; it feels like there's an answer hiding here, even if she ain't entirely clear on what the question might be.

"So you believe the 'symptoms' are real," she summarizes, "but not that this potion really works?"

"Oh, no, it works alright. Proof that it works is walking around town yelling and crying how it works. But what else does it do, Miss Hooper, that's my thinking."

Something familiar, yes, it is like the slightest pinprick, somewhere tough and inconsequential like the sole of her foot, just a prick that comes and is gone and doesn't hurt afterward but yes, something familiar – it works and it does more than that too – and _now_ is the time she should look amongst the books before the feeling is gone completely. But she doesn't, and glances back at him over her shoulder.

She finds him smiling, the way he will when he must maintain eye contact so that no one but her might see just the right card edge out of his sleeve and into his hand. Even with that in mind, and knowing it's his sleeves and pockets that ought to be watched just now, it's hard not to fall for it. "Don't you ever feel like doing something different with your day?" he asks her.

His sleeves and his pockets, his sleeves and his pockets, not to be trusted when he smiles, "Why don't you just ask somebody who's already bought the stuff?"

Readily admitting, "I tried. One person I trust, I'm pretty sure he was one of them sales last night. I went to him before I came here and he swore blind he didn't at all, didn't so much as think of it. If you must know, that's when it occurred to me this might be a serious matter."

His pockets and sleeves, he ought not be trusted when he's candid. No liar is ever truly honest, except for his own ends which ain't hardly honesty at all. Her mother and maiden aunts taught her that too. He ought not be trusted when he smiles. How sad, then, and how ironic, that when he smiles is precisely when he is hardest to resist.


	10. Faith

Just too much time has passed since Jim Moriarty put pen to paper, since he indulged in the rare pleasures of the Old Testament. All those killings and curses, all that fear. There's a God he could understand devotion to. There's a God he could take teaching from. Abraham and Isaac is never any less fun than he remembers. Why, just imagine, to ask a father to kill his son and be obeyed. God, and Jim will never be convinced otherwise than this, called off the sacrifice simply because He never expected that to work. He can practically hear the Almighty's disbelieving laughter and to his mind that is the thing to aim for. When you yourself cannot believe the reach of your own powers, that's when you know you've made it.

Paris has gone to one of the pastor's services. The more information they can gather about how this town works, they more they can squeeze out of it, and the more they know about that pastor the better equipped they are to stand against him. He's feeling alright, on top of things, and it's just then that the Tiger-Man leans through from the stage, "Boss, somebody coming."

"Who?" He slips through, hidden and quiet. He buttons his cuffs and collar, smoothes his hair, perfects himself for public appearance. Their visitor is still at a fair distance; the Tiger-Man has to point her out. "Ah. Blusher."

She stood at one side last night, suffering the colloquial witterings of the old broad runs the saloon in one ear. Jim wouldn't say for sure she heard any of it, nor, in fact, a single word that might have left his own mouth. Another starer, like the long-nosed creature at the back, this _Sherlock_ he's starting to hear all about. Except every time he made eye contact with _this_ little mouse, she stopped staring. She looked only at her feet when he looked at her, and turned the most virulent shade of crimson.

Jim pats the great black shoulder just once. "I'm going back to the good book. Send her round."

"Might want to make sure none of Paris' underthings ain't draped around."

True, and a good point, and indeed it's something he has to action before the sweeter animal can arrive, bundling white cotton into the back of the wagon. That's a hell of a consideration. That's a liability. A man running a business, a man working towards something bigger and better than this, he can do without people he can't rely on, people he's got to pick up after, people who put him in jeopardy. The Tiger-Man don't have enough brain to break any rules, but the woman is a whole other thing.

He gets caught up thinking about it. He's still looking at her mess when, over his shoulder, "Excuse me?" So soft, if he wasn't expecting her he wouldn't hear her. She stands at quite some distance still, looking quite as though she'd walk straight away again if he told her to. Her timidity and apprehension are born, not out of fear, but out of real, earnest innocence. It takes Jim a moment to accept that. It's not something he sees too often.

"Hello," and he figures he makes a decent fist of mild surprise. After all, he ain't meant to be expecting her in the first place.

It's enough of an invitation for her to come closer. Looking at her feet again, like she needs to pick her steps across the grass with any care. "I'm sorry to disturb you in private, sir-"

"Not at all." He crosses to her, guiding her uncertain steps to the chair he only just left. "I'm only sorry to meet you in such Spartan surroundings. Couldn't we arrange to-"

"Oh no!" She reaches out, delicately touching his arm, an exhortation to stay. He draws close one of the travelling chests to sit down on. "No, I won't take up much of your time and… And anyway, I can't talk in town."

Those eyes really are quite extraordinary. Big and wet and afraid. This, unless he's much mistaken, is what faith looks like. Not belief; Jim knows belief very well. His entire business is written on belief. A little speck of proof and these people belong to him. _Faith_ is a whole other thing. Faith is belief before there's anything to believe in.

"What is it that troubles you, Mrs…?"

"Miss. Molly Hooper."

"Miss Hooper, I can assure you, you speak in absolute confidence."

She steels herself for it. It gives him just a moment in which he may dare to dream of what she might say. Of course, she's just a sale. Like any of the rest of them. She could prove useful to him only in creating further sales and altering any mistrustful attitudes in the front rows. That's all. So why is it his mind is still working, running too fast to keep him up to date on the details but all he knows, he's got a use for her.

And when her story begins, it's hard to believe, but he's getting everything he asked for. She has, she says, a disease. She says the doctor in town can't tell what's wrong with her. Physically, he says, she's fine. But Miss Hooper knows, just _knows_, it's real. And it will lay her low and she is, she declares, dying. And if there is any chance at a miracle, any chance at all, she has to take it. Because of the idiot doctor she can't mention it in town. They already think she's crazy. "I heard you speak last night and it struck me, God's the last place I can turn to."

"He's been waiting for you, Miss Hooper."

The rest is script, from the prayer to providing her with the glass bottle she came for to refusing her every effort to pay for it. This part, he's played out before, though maybe not quite with such conviction. No other Miss Hooper has ever been quite so fascinating to him, or had the potential to mean quite so much.

He walks her back to the road, and when he turns he finds the Tiger-Man intently watching.

Once Miss Hooper is out of earshot, "What? Them eyes of your'n don't suit staring. Look like you're gone cook me…"

"What was that all about?"

Hard to say, exactly. Hard to put it into words. Jim walks right back and sits up on the stage edge, contriving the precise phrasing with care. "She look sick to you?"

The Tiger-Man rolls his eyes. The bottles and pitcher clink together as he goes back to his work; he can do that at the same time as filling in his lines. "Looked hale and hearty to me, boss."

"But you see, she don't have to be sick. Works a hell of a lot better if she ain't, in fact. But she's got it in her heart, see? If she believes it, everybody else will too."

"You talking to me or to yourself?"

"Trouble with Paris is, she knows it's a lie, so-"

"To yourself, then. That's fine. I'll finish up here in the meantime."

"-but with Hooper, ain't an issue. If she really does think… Ain't to say any of this will ever come to pass, but the idea of it, you have to admit, the idea of it is a temptation. Ain't it? Tiger, you ain't even heard a word I've said."

"You weren't talking to me!"

Their arguing startles a cry out of an approaching horse, puts a little stutter in the percussion of hooves. Returning from church, Paris slips down from the side of the saddle and comes the rest of the way on foot. Those red boots, and she thinks nothing of hitching her skirts up above the grass. No delicacy, no truth in her. Jim's never seen it as such a grand old issue before. But now, with the possibility of better opened up in his mind, he sees it. Like having a smell pointed out to you and after that you can't get rid of it and it drives you crazy. "I leave you boys alone for an hour-" she crows, and hellfire, but her voice is broad and grating. It carries well over a crowd but any woman with a good pair of lungs can be taught to project. "I just passed Blusher on the road."

"Miss Hooper," Jim corrects. "Miss Molly Hooper."

"Tell me that ain't what we're all riled up over, gentlemen."

The smile, the laugh, how come he's never noticed this before? What's she really got going for her nobody else has? What's she got that makes her worth all her trouble? He drops down from where he's sitting and steps close, and does it without speaking so that she bridles back, not understanding. "You ever hear tell," he asks her, "of a _genuine_, bona-fide healing? The sick brought back to their own true selves, the lame raised to walk. The real thing, Paris."

"Well," and she tries to be magical, sparkling, a turn of the head and shoulders that worked in every town from Boston and hooked right round to the south here in Bakerville. This is when it don't work anymore, "Well, I guess I hear about mine every night, don't I?"

He takes her by the arms, shaking her, "And you do so _well_! Imagine, girl, just _imagine_, what it would go like somebody who actually _believed_ their story…"


	11. Tricks Of The Trade

John Watson didn't tell no lies to Holmes when he came asking about the glass bottle. He told him he didn't purchase one last night. Wasn't one word of a lie in that. He just neglected to mention the near-full one the red-haired girl left to him. The more time passes, the more that feels worse than lying ever could have. He didn't want that bottle, that's why he put it away with the horse medicines, but this morning he didn't admit to it. He still don't want it. He don't want anything to do with it. A con job, like all the rest, river water and gin. One of these sellers he came across once was telling fat old ladies they could slim down and selling them vinegar to shrink their stomachs. A con job. He ought not have held back.

The boy that cleans out the stalls was late again this morning. Nothing strange there. He's always slept late and he's always got a story to the contrary. John likes listening to it, if he's honest, finds it amusing generally. This morning, not so much.

The kid's old man has been laid up years now with a raw and painful skin complaint. This morning, after liberal application of that slick sliver water, this morning was the first time he woke up with new, hardening skin, not seeping. And though John declared this tale to be the same as the stuff the boy was shovelling out of the stalls, the kid insisted, and told it in such a way that it had to be believed. And then Holmes arrived and… And the rest is a known thing.

But he should have never let himself be took in.

Come lunch, he takes up the cane, puts the bottle in his pocket and starts across town. Holmes wants a sample, he can have one. Sure as hell John ain't going to be putting it to any use, no, sir, so somebody might as well have it.

It ain't the pain of the old wound that bothers him. Pain's a thing a body can get himself past. The longer it goes on, the less it means. The pain ain't the problem, it's the buckling. It's the damned cane, and the struggle, the unpredictability of when it's going to go from underneath him and if there's going to be anybody around to see. But ain't no water in a bottle going to change that and so he's giving it up. Otherwise it'll sit on that shelf until it makes a fool of him.

He takes his time climbing the outside stairs to Holmes' rooms. He has to. But it lets him hear, too, what's going on upstairs. For instance, he must have just missed the slamming of the door, because the shouting now sounds like only the very beginnings of an argument.

"_Never_ ask me to lie like that again!"

Sounds like Miss Hooper from the saloon, that voice. Couldn't be, just couldn't.

"Who asked you to lie? All I said was go up there and get him to sell-"

"-Making stuff up, trying not to condemn myself, what would your brother say if he thought-?"

"Ain't a card you want to try and play, Miss Hooper."

So it is her. And from the sound of things, they ain't got no purpose for what's in John's pocket any more than John does. A disappointment, certainly. But now that he's reached the top of these stairs he ain't much liking the idea of going back down them, and doesn't it anyway sound like the poor girl might be in need of some support? John raises the head of the cane and raps on the door anyway.

Nobody hears him at first. Busy, amongst themselves, with calls and mutterings, "Try and not move them, would you?" and "You want to tell me what I was up there suffering that man for?", more and so on and so forth until John tucks the cane under his arm and knocks hard with his fist instead. Heaven help the neighbour downstairs.

"Hellfire, who's that gonna be right now?!" Holmes throws the door open, "Mind your o- oh. It's you. Come inside. Miss Hooper, John Watson. John, this is Miss Molly Hooper."

"We've met," John says, and only briefly tips his hat to the young lady trying so hard to hide her fluster in new company.

Holmes pauses a moment, perplexed. Then it comes back to him, "Oh, 'cause you drink."

Distant and distracted, quick, cutting, hard to believe this is the same man stopped by the stables the other night. He doesn't even know he's being rude, or that Hooper cried out in indignation, or that there's anybody else in the room or that there might have been some reason John came here. This last doesn't so much as occur to him, having as he does his own use for his presence. "You talk to everybody," he says. "Hear everything, between where you work and the saloon. You know them all. Now what have you heard about the effects of-" And yes, what he produces now is a full new bottle that Miss Hooper must have procured for the effort. John pats his pocket down flat to makes sure it makes no noise and don't bulge too much.

While he's here, he might as well do what he can. He tells what the stable boy told him, about the skin condition, and a story he overheard as he came this way about Mrs Anderson's sickly, invalid son who got up out of his bed today for the first in weeks.

"That's the second story that's come about lethargies vanishing. And the skin, the healing of skin…" Holmes paces, scratching his unshaven chin. There's an answer. His expression makes painfully clear, there's an answer and he can all but reach it. It's distance is murderous to him.

"Symptoms," says Hooper. Small and quiet, but enough to draw attention and make both of them look at her. On instinct she drops her gaze to her own twisting hands. "You called them effects. Ought to call them symptoms."

Holmes is just beginning to roll his eyes. An admonishing look from Watson stops him. Instead, "Yes, yes, you're quite right. Have to remember it's any _adverse_ effects we're looking for."

"No," and now Hooper's voice is stronger, demanding to be listened to, "No, I mean… I know, or… Or anyway, I think I do, know what the cause is."

But there she stops, and with his breath held, with the electric vibration of a child waiting for Christmas, Holmes waits all of four seconds before, "Well?" Still Looking down, shaking her head, she raises up on hand, asking for just a moment to think but, "Not wishing to be indelicate, Miss Hooper, but this is a serious matter-"

"Oh, I know." Her gravity is appropriate, and speaks of a great burden upon her held in high regard. "I know that, and before I send a man to prison, Mr Holmes, or _worse_-"

"Worse," he nods. She doesn't like his smile. "Definitely worse."

"-Then I should like to be _sure_, sir, and make a test." Now, as timid as she may be, Miss Hooper stands and straightens down her skirts. She steels herself with a deep breath and goes entirely unbidden to the miniscule kitchen. There's one small square table pushed up against the wall, and this she drags to the middle of the floor and begins to clear it of its messes, reaching for a cloth to wipe it with. "I require muriatic acid," she says with absolute assurance, "and a thin piece of copper."

Holmes and Watson, having followed her this far, can only glance at each other. Then, with a slight raising of his brow and no more, Holmes rolls back around the doorway and goes out of the room. He comes back with a small stoppered bottle of smoked glass, marked with a bright clear warning label, and puts it down on the corner of the table. Most unconvincingly, "Cleaning lady left it."

John, for his part, reaches into his waistcoat pocket and is able to produce a small dome of copper with a lipped edge. "Use 'em for covering the heads of studs," he is saying, as Holmes shows it to Hooper. She very slightly shakes her head and he raises one finger to indicate he has an idea. As he's leaving the room again, for lack of anything else to do, John goes on, "It's fancy-work for people can't afford silver fixings. Keeps its colour longer too, copper, see, so-"

He stops, flinching, interrupted by a sudden and protracted series of shuddering bangs, and when the downstairs neighbour has done knocking on the ceiling with a broom, Holmes is back with a much flatter and thinner piece of metal. "That'll do it," Miss Hooper says. She unbuttons her cuffs. Rolling them back, she seems to freshly notice that they're both still here. By expression alone, she sends them from the room.

Outside the shut door, John whispers, "What's she doing?"

"Seems _she_ knows," Holmes shrugs.

"So what do we do?"

"Seems we wait for her to do it."

There's only that one armchair in the sitting room. Though it's offered to him, John can't take it. Doesn't feel right, when it's so late vacated by Miss Hooper. Besides, his leg is crying out like a spoiled child for the respite and he will not give it the satisfaction. He leans a little heavier on the cane, though, as he rounds the chair towards the window. Holmes breathes out quick for him to be careful, but he's already seen the danger.

The floor behind is covered in playing cards, their intricate backs turned up to the light. It seems nonsensical, and why on earth should Holmes worry if they get moved and shifted out of their straight, precise grid?

But it doesn't take long for Watson to spot it. See, there are plants on the window ledge; a flourishing tomato plant and a few more stunted shrubs, one long stemmed flower that stands up too tall and leans over them all. And all of these things cast strange and unique shadows, cut out harsh by the strong sun, down on the cards. "So _that's_ how they're marked," he muses with a smile. "I'll give you that, Holmes, that is real smart."

"Why, thank you. Ain't often anybody gets to appreciate that."

"Secret's safe with me."

He explains, to pass the time, that this particular window only gets light for a few hours a day, so there's no need to worry about the edges blurring. The sun-bleaching effect around the shadows is subtle, and no uninitiated mind is ever likely to notice when they're only seeing one card at a time. At Hudson's, where Holmes sits in his dark corner, the light comes from behind whatever shill he's skinning and shines through, showing up the memory of the plant shadows.

"But," John adds, "what about these in the top line? Ain't all of them suffering any shadow at all. What do you do about those?"

Another shrug. "Nothing. Keeps things interesting."

"Not interesting enough, though, right?"

"Come again?"

"Well, what do you have to go getting involved in this sort of thing for, if your cards are interesting enough?"

"What's it to do with you?"

"…Ain't, I guess." John considers the cards, slowly learning to deceive, for just a moment longer. Then, with a nod to himself, he picks up his hat and turns towards the door. "You'll excuse me. I'd best get back to my own business."

John Watson goes away with his clear glass bottle still in his pocket and still most of the way full. He's not there when Miss Hooper comes back out of the kitchen, flushed and triumphant with a slight acid burn on the side of her hand. He doesn't hear her tell how she trained to be a nurse, and wound up training under a gentleman who dealt more with the dead than the living. He doesn't hear the words 'forensic' or 'Reinsch test'.

Doesn't hear the words 'arsenic' or 'mercury' either.


	12. Women Of Good Sense

Whatever Holmes' surprise at Hooper's hidden talents, or Hooper's at her own usefulness, or Watson's at the changing and strangeness of either of them, these must be held as trifles next to Irene Adler's when she comes to her rapped door to find, she has a visitor. Uninvited, unexpected, and holding tight to a distinctively, irrevocably, unmistakably _black_ book. Don't take the silver foil cross on the front cover to tell where what that is.

She hadn't expected to meet the preacher's woman again. In fact, she had hoped to meet the preacher alone first. Which is not, of course, to say that she has anything against this precious Widow Paris, not in the slightest. No, it's just that she's in the way, taking up a space that Irene can't help but feel she would fill out much, much better. There's nothing personal in it whatsoever. As a matter of fact, over supper that other night they talked long and loudly and full of laughing. Exactly as Adler had suspected, no little mouse wife, this one. Hadn't seemed the sort to proselytize either, and that's why she can't take her eyes off that blasted book in her hand.

Then Miss Paris says, small and smiling, "Do me a favour, honey. Roll your eyes so's your neighbours think I'm trying to save your soul."

Irene obliges, and it doesn't take much imagination to be grudging in the way she clears the doorway. "You mean you ain't?"

Once she's inside, the woman stops smiling. Distant, distracted, "No, I ain't, but we each of us live by our reputations."

"I do well enough without."

"I never specified the reputation ought to be good… Mrs Adler, not wishing to impose upon you, but would you have a drink?"

Why, what an opportunity. What a fabulous thing to just walk on up to Irene's door of an afternoon. She wasn't doing anything of real importance anyway; she puts her mending away when she goes back to the parlour. Maybe forever. After all, she'd have to have more modest things than a saloon piano player wears for up on that stage. And when they come to the coast she'll have to have a wardrobe befitting a woman of the standing she intends to attain.

So with breezy friendliness, that particular bond that forms between two women who have taken off their everyday masks to sit in a dim room together, she invites her guest to settle herself down, fixes a strong drink for her and a weaker one for herself. That's only sensible.

"You do not know," Miss Paris breathes through the first deep draught of it, "how good it is, not having to be good."

"I don't imagine you often get to know people you could… forgive the expression, that you could loosen your stays with."

"Don't tempt me, Mrs Adler." A flutter of mirth, camaraderie. Irene allows that to last as long as it naturally wants to, and all the while is thinking, what to say next, how to put it, how to ask. By then, however, the other woman is wearing a wry, exhausted smile and knows precisely the question that ought to come. "Business, that's what brings me here. Yours as much as mine."

A flash of panic, or something like it, and Adler figures maybe her best and safest times are just a few steps behind her. Backing up, one hand raised ever-so-delicately to the base of her throat, "Why, Miss Paris, whatever could you mean? I ain't got no business round these parts except for enterta-"

The smile splits into a grin and then to laughter like thunder splits out of a dark sky. "My word, that's as fast as I've ever seen anybody get respectable again, and you got no idea how many closets I've been pushed inside and underneath of beds and out back doors." There's a sharp, unattractive bray in the midst of the giggling and she forces herself to stop. With a cautious eye turned on Adler's crystal tumbler, she appraises the drink she's been given and sets it to one side. "All I mean, you were doing very well at being candid, and I was greatly refreshed by it."

Fine. Fine, let's be candid. Adler sinks back low in her chair and crosses her legs. "What business?"

"You're after my position." This is stated so simply and clearly that no argument could stand against it, and no desire to even _try_ and deny it is kindled in Adler's heart. So precise and known a fact and there is simply nothing that need be added. The only thing even close to a reaction is that Irene is a little disappointed in herself. "Oh, please – why, it's only by experience that I knew why you took such an interest in our ministry and my role in it that evening we sat here last. You did just _fine_, Irene, now don't you worry your head about that. And I allowed the talk to go on because, well, for starters I wasn't telling you one tenth of it – and I know you think you read between the lines but that still don't get you more than a quarter of the way there."

"You and our Lord ain't never met, have you?"

"I think I passed him in a bar once, he might have sent me a drink." Irene fumes, to have her intended snub so snubbed. "Will you cheer up? I'm here to help you."

"Of course you are!" and Irene stands, all her derision and distaste written in her poise, in the ruffle of her stalk away to the window, to look at something else, anything else, anything that ain't this vile, lying, manipulating vermin decided to show up this afternoon and drink Irene's liquor, well, _damn_ her, damn her if she ain't already damned and damn her harder if she is. "Of course you are. Here to tell me it ain't what it seems and it'll hollow out the soul to do what you do, how you regret it, here to make yourself cry and figure I'll stop trying, well, let me tell you something. Let me tell you. I'm getting out of this town. I'm getting out in better style. And if that means you _don't_ get out of it, Miss Paris? So be it."

That laugh comes back, tipping back the woman's head, looking like the only possible way she might end up crying. Indeed, with the tip of a finger she dabs the darkened corners of her lashes. "Are you quite finished?" With a sigh, "Ain't me you need to worry about. Our dear Mr Moriarty, ain't nothing going to happen to me from him, never was no danger of that. I've got my own uses. That's the other reason I let you keep running your bitch mouth before, Mrs Adler, you understand me?"

She's a liar. Ain't like Irene didn't know that before, but she's lying now, and it goes rougher, cuts her deeper, than singing her Hallelujahs ever night. Her fingernails are gnawed down to the quick. That ain't the action of a woman so sure of her position as she claims. Irene straightens her back and bears this in mind.

"None of this means you don't have a chance of blowing this burg, though. Another believer is always welcome in the ministry. But he's not going to drag a whole wagonload of women round with him, and right now you ain't top of his wish list."

Bridling, thinking of returning to her seat to listen more carefully, "I'm guessing neither are you."

"Doesn't matter, like I told you. I know too much. And you are just the same sort of smart, driven kind of creature I was when this began. He don't like making the same mistake twice. And the person he's really got his eye on, she don't seem to have that spark of intelligence you and me are so proud to display. Cute little rabbit works elbow to elbow with you."

"…_Molly_?" Now that Irene thinks of it, the mouse did confess she'd found the man to be handsome. But that's as far as it went. But it all makes too much sense, considered alongside her character and lack of spine, that little Hooper could be secretly sick, or believe she is. Heavens, it all just falls too easily together. Irene's the one left feeling _ill_. "But you've still got your chance," the woman says. "I hope you see that?"

Adler spits, "What chance?"

Out of some fold of her dress, Miss Paris produces a small bottle of fine green glass. It looks like it might be perfume, except that the dark corrosion at the edges of the silver stopper is of a character Irene has never come across before, pitted and sharp and vicious. She puts it down on the table between them and then stands, and fixes herself at the mirror in readiness for leaving. In readiness for leaving, and while Adler carefully studies the bottle, she picks up her drink again and puts away about half of it.

"What is this?"

Another too-blithe laugh, insulting, animal, "Hellfire, Mrs Adler! Get yourself a look at that little skull and bones on the side and you tell me." She grins, carrying her glass all the way to the door, muttering about damn good liquor before she sets the glass away. "Just so you'll know, your neighbours are going to see me leaving happy, like I made a breakthrough. It'll work better for your story if you're going to reform and take to the road with us. You're welcome, Mrs Adler."


	13. Cheat First

To Holmes' mind, it's over.

He's back in Hudson's, back at his table at the end of the bar, where it's dark. Back to watching the light shine through the shadows on the cards, back is waiting for Mrs Adler to start up small-talking for the night. She, for her part, seems a little distracted. Maybe it's just strange to be back to work, right and proper. She's got nowhere to slip off to tonight; there ain't no show up on the gallows' hill to go watch. It's over, all over…

Mycroft was only too happy to believe. With the results of Hooper's scientific analysis, and Holmes's more forthright way of laying bare the short and long term effects, he was passing judgement in his mind even before the conversation was over. He kept their proof, comparing the situations described from all over town to the early stories from back along the road.

Arsenic's the main particular of Moriarty's miracle. Which ain't so sad or terrible a statement; why, just about everybody knows it's a medical wonder in and of itself. Who hasn't picked themselves up with Fowler's solution after an illness? It's all the same thing, ain't it? Everybody knows, in small, controlled doses that ain't allowed to build up, arsenic is a very powerful tonic. What about them Bavarians, living up mountains, living half of forever, ruddy and red as life itself, that carve it off a block like you or I might serve out cheese? It ain't so awful a thing.

But it's the dose that makes for the dying. Many wise men have expressed that same sentiment and said it better, but there is Holmes' way. It's the dose that makes for the dying.

In the same doses as Fowler's solution – and after all, wouldn't that seem a sensible, household way of measuring new medicines? – the tonic effects aren't going to last that long. Now, the smart and pragmatic, they're going to notice they don't feel so good. They'll stop taking. They aren't the people anybody has to worry about. But the weak and the desperate, the deeply religious, the downright stupid, they're going to die. Nothing else to say about it. And whatever Holmes may think about those sorts of people and what they do and do not deserve doesn't come into it.

Mycroft was never sold so fast on anything his whole entire life.

The Sheriff is back on the smart side of the argument too. Funny, how he always seems to be there. Even when the argument is the same and only the side has changed. He took a goodly number of men up the hill with him and insisted the stage be taken down, the wagon packed up, the makeshift church moved right on along. By all accounts, he insisted in a most genteel and gentlemanly manner, and was submitted to in like fashion. Any man who tagged along looking for a fight was sorely disappointed. But then, what else should be expected from good, God-fearing Christians?

They'll be moving on, then.

It's just, they'll find out right and swift, they ain't got nowhere to go.

Because as the Sheriff was headed back out of town on his own errand, Mycroft had chosen an envoy of his own from out of his loyal flock. A strong man, a stalwart, of good family and good standing and with his own horse. He rode out in the other direction, and isn't expected back for a couple of days.

So yes, as he said, as he keeps saying to himself, to Holmes' mind, it is all over. He is, as he keeps having to remind himself, back at his table at the end of the bar with the case under the chair, and that's all the case he's got or is likely to get. A murder and a shyster in the space of a year? Why, this already has been too much to ask. He should be grateful for these two distractions and shut his mouth and wait.

It's over for Miss Hooper too.

She really did come to doing something different with her day. She used a skill she didn't think she'd have any call to use and earned great respect for that. She did well up on the hill too, even if she didn't take quite so well to the lies of it. And now Miss Hooper is moving again between tables, and suffering leers and laughter, gathering up glassware. She's back to her little pattering steps and her head tucked down and her occasional clumsy turns. Ain't nothing to her anymore, and there was this afternoon.

But it's over. She ought to get used to that. This first time will be the hardest.

Now he finds himself watching her and realizing, he don't know this is the first time. He don't know a thing about her, does he? Not really, not the way he thought he did. She stood next to a doctor at the cutting edge of detection and medicine and learned all she knows from just watching and assisting. Now what does that make of Miss Molly Hooper, after all?

Apparently, though, tonight ain't to be his night for thinking it over. A shadow falls over the empty chair across from him. "Well, 'bout time-" It's the old greeting, casual defiance. It spurs men to cast out more money, the thinking that Holmes is so sure of himself. "-Figured I wasn't going to make _no_ living this night."

"You still ain't." The voice, even before he looks up from the shuffling deck, is dimly familiar. He'd know it very well indeed if it was bellowing over a hundred local heads. The preacher takes his seat unbidden and says, "A man of God can't play for no coins. Would be unseemly."

_Then kindly move along_, that's the usual response, the only one that makes any sense. Holmes don't ask for much – why, only to keep himself in liquor, and rent to keep him away from that brother of his, and the occasional heartbeat if he's lucky – and he ain't got no space for timewasters. But that's just the usual and it ain't tonight. Tonight the preacher is more than welcome, if only to find out what he might want. "Ain't seemly for him to touch of cards, neither. Devil's bible, they call them up at the built church, the sort with foundations instead of wheels."

"Be our little secret."

"Us and all these fine people around here."

"Figure they'll have other things on their minds, soon enough." The preacher stretches right out across the table and takes the deck away from him. He's got a dexterous and flashy way with the cutting and shuffling, more than comfortable with it. "Once the word gets around and they all come looking for their money back. I thought somebody ought to know the whole camp's shifting as we speak. Hell, even I won't know where they've got to right away. I thought, too, that somebody ought to be you."

It's the preacher who deals. Honestly, as far as Holmes can see, and he likes to think he'd spot the slip of a cheating fingertip. He peels just the very corners of his cards up from the baize. They're decent, but that's not so great a matter as the cards the preacher's got. He's got them picked right up, fanned out. If Miss Hooper were to pass behind him with a little mirror, Holmes would see everything. As it is, two of them ain't marked. The other three's an eight and two aces.

It can't, at least, be four of a kind. He's got the ace of diamonds under his own palm.

"And why is this great privilege to be visited upon a poor sinner like me?"

So fine a smile it might be as if they were discussing horse harness, or trinkets for women, "Because I know it was you."

In the midst of the piano music there comes a single jarring discord, and the prickly sensation of having Mrs Adler's eyes flutter back over her shoulder.

"I don't know how you did it," Moriarty continues, "but I know you did it nonetheless. And I just want you to know I don't hold it against you in any way."

"Oh, well, that's good. That's mighty good to hear." Holmes discards a useless four. "I only hope the good feeling lingers when you hear the rest of it."

"Never mind it all. I've been run out before and run out worse than this. Anyhow, ain't as if I intend to leave this town empty-handed." More discord. In fact, the entire right hand of the music drops away, because Mrs Adler has turned right around on her bench and can't reach it anymore. The preacher rolls his eyes and rolls the rest of himself to face her, "If you don't mind my asking, how in hell do you keep this post, ma'am?"

She mumbles something that their table isn't just so interesting any other night and goes back to playing. There's a flash in Moriarty's eyes that belies all his magnanimous understanding, something that it doesn't hurt Holmes in the slightest to see.

"That's about all I came to say," is next from the preacher. He looks at the cards in his hands, "With nothing to play for, don't suppose there's any sense in dragging this out any longer. Shall we show, the two of us?"

"The two of us," Holmes agrees, about as pleasant as he can bear and an extra stretch of pleasant that whiskey might have to kill when he's gone.

But the preacher turns his cards out too fast for him. His reach the table first.

And there, amongst all the other aces, is the ace of diamonds.

"Four of a kind," Holmes murmurs, and sets his own cards discreetly to one side, face down. "I only hope that such a run of luck may follow you onward to California, given that every town ahead of this one will be bolting the doors against you. Yes, since we're all being so open and forgiving, I suppose you ought to learn too, my brother sent a man out along the road to the next large town. And from there, they're going to send out a man to go further, and they'll skip like stones all the way to the ocean, and there won't be no haven for you, not at all."

Rage comes and goes. Just a single wave of it, gentle as the ocean on the shore, in… and then away again. That fine, breezy smile again, "Why, I was right about you after all."

"How so?"

"I knew you were a man like me, Mr Holmes. So then, let me give you a lesson – from a man like us with practice at it to one quite decidedly hiding his light beneath a bushel –" And whatever the lesson to come, he illustrates it by pushing his forefinger down on the unfamiliar ace, "Always cheat first, Mr Holmes. And when you can't cheat first, cheat better."

[Merry Xmas to all of you, and especially the person this is for J - No update for a day or two – I have an 11-year old to entertain.]


	14. Sin

Scout has no breath anymore. She doesn't have her hat anymore either, it got blown off along the road, and her hair is streaming out behind her. Ironic, that now when she would most like to be disguised, she is exposed. At least nobody who's ever met her up until now can recognize her. She rides hard, and any other day it would feel like flying, like joy, but this has too much necessity in it to be happy about it. From time to time, she has to take the reins in one hand, and drag her eyes clear of salt-sting, just to see where she's going.

She forces her horse on and on until she's back on the far side of Bakerville. There, at the clear space in front of the gallows, she finally lets him pause, and jumps down. But there's nothing to see. There's only the upturned earth where the stage edges were and where tent pegs were pulled away, the ruts left by the wheels of the wagon. There's nothing to see, nobody here to find.

"No," she mumbles, and holds her head. Now that there seems to be space for them the tears come quicker and heavier and won't be shoved away again. "No, please. Boss? Tiger?!" She runs to where there are trees and shadows that might conceal them and even stoops to, "…Miss Paris?"

No answer. No sound at all except her poor animal struggling between catching it's breath and wanting to cut loose again. "No-no-no, this is bad, it's really bad, I need you. You have to _know_…"

Both hands come up to quiet her panicking mouth, and a smell she hardly recognizes drifts up from her cuffs and she almost gags. They're red, when she looks at them, her white shirt cuffs. They're red and dark and darkening still as they dry. She unrolls the sleeves of her jackets down to hide them. Shaking with terror, she swings back up into the saddle. "Come on, fella, we have to find them."

She didn't want to head back into town but it's a matter of necessity now. At least it's getting dark. She holds the horse's speed back, trying not to draw attention to herself, hanging her head to mask the shape of her body, to let her hair hang down over her shoulder and against her chest. As a shadow, she still might not look like herself. But where can she go, that's another terrible question. She's not ever supposed to know anybody. Nobody's ever supposed to know her. All these towns, it's her job to come and go, to pass through them like a ghost through a wall, but…

But Bakerville was different, wasn't it? It was only days ago, but it's in her nature to forget kindness; it makes life easier when she doesn't expect anything. Now that she's in trouble, she remembers, and knows where to guide the straining hooves beneath her.

It's late. She can only pray that cripple farrier is still where she left him.

There are lights at the livery stable. It's the only hope or relief she's had all day. She draws up at the gate and, without getting down, "Hello? Excuse me?" Only the animals answer her. "Oh, Christ, please, hello?! Anybody?"

"What's the damned racket?" There are three taps to every step that is coming to meet her – two feet and the cane. Scout bites hard at her lip to kill her crying before he can see her. And when he does, he changes. Stops cussing, ain't aggravated in the slightest. And down where he must think she can't see, he tucks the glass bottle she left him down into his pocket. Still looking, to her dismay, about as full as she left it.

Considering what she ran across on the road this afternoon, this last brings a bellows to the last of her anger. It flares so that she only just remembers to make sure her cuffs are pushed back.

"Hello again, Miss."

"Mister, I wish I could talk with you, but I need to find where that ministry set up, and it's real urgent and-"

"Hey, calm down now. Slower." She has to let two deep breaths go through her before she can bear to repeat herself. When she opens her mouth to begin, he speaks instead, "Now tell me what you're looking for them for."

He's close by now. From up on her horse, she can look down into his pocket. And in her most careful and controlled fashion she says, "You ain't taken any."

His name was Watson, wasn't it? This too-cautious Mr Watson says in reply, "Well, honest, there's been some talk that it might not be all that good for a man, in the long run."

"Aw, hell – ain't happened again, has it? I keep hearing this sorry tale. You don't happen to have some real old crotchety minister in this town already, do you?" He is about to give her an argument, before he realizes he has to nod instead. "Jealous sum'bitches, this keeps happening, damn it. Listen, mister… Look at me. I look like I had any ill effects? I feel better than ever. Mister, if I was you I'd cover my ears against all of them and I'd knock that whole damn bottle back." A sob shudders in her chest but she can't let it break. Still, he sees it, and starts to reach out.

"Hey now, I didn't mean to upset y-"

"That preacher's the best thing that's ever happened in my miserable life. Don't you tell me I ain't meant to be upset when-"

"_Scout_?!" Her sentence, the farrier, her distress, existence forgotten, all of it gone in an eye-blink because that voice is the right voice, the one she knows, all she wants, it's everything, the whole world, and Scout is down from her horse too quick, tossing the reins over the hitching post and running hard's she can to the preacher's arms. He enfolds her on simple instinct, and in the moment he realizes what he's doing he takes her by the wrists and holds her out. "What in the hell are you doing here?"

"Oh, boss," and already his eyes are travelling down, finding the source of the iron tang on the air, the stains of her sin, "I done an awful thing."

And then it's exactly as she knew it would be. He knows exactly what to do. He tells her to cover up that mess, until they can get away. He knows where to turn and where the Tiger-Man is meeting them. Nobody left her behind. She's alright, and has everything she needs around her. He holds her under his arm and, once he's sure that her shaking and fear is all under control, "Now tell me whose blood that is."

"Oh, sir, I'm so sorry. I ain't never meant to do it, only-"

"Is that the question I asked you?"

"No, sir." She steadies herself, gets her thoughts in order, and resigns to telling him everything.

Earlier today, on her way back to him with news of the next town to suit him, she met a man along the road. He thought, like everybody does, that she was a boy, and stopped her, 'Scuse me, son," and this man, obviously he wasn't used to travelling, because he was stopping her for water. And of course, like any good Christian, Scout shared willingly of her bounty. She is a good girl, a good Christian, a good person, she is, she really is.

Except as he drank, this man who wasn't used to travelling, turns out he didn't even known the basics – you don't talk. Don't chatter any more than you have to. Don't get to know anybody. He stood talking when Scout needed to move on.

Turns out it was a good thing he did. "'Cause, sir, he'd been sent from this town right here, to go to the next one, and send somebody on to the next one, and to tell everybody – oh, sir, you'll never believe-"

"-That the solution is poison," he fills in.

"…So maybe you might believe it."

"Don't stop now, angel. Tell me the rest."

What else to say? How to tell it? She lifts up her hands again and feels her eyes fill up hot again and feels the cold, swaying guilt inside her stomach. Again, she gets stuck in the old loop, "I'm so sorry. I didn't even hardly know I was doing it, it was so evil, you must hate me. Please, sir, am I going to hell now?"

He stops. Right there in the street, he stops walking and stops her too, holding her back. He holds her there and stands in front of her, crouched low, and takes both her bloodied hands in his. "Hell?" he breathes, like he can't quite believe she ever dreamt it. "Hell? No, my angel. Why on Earth would you think that? Hell's for murderers. You ain't no murderer. Might have killed a man, but you ain't no murderer. What do you think becomes of holy warriors, my sweet? Darling, no, not hell, never hell. You've delivered us all. You done carved yourself a place in the battalions of the heavenly host, that's what you gone done."

Why, he knows just what to do. She knew he would. He always does know just exactly what to do.


	15. Disappointment

Paris is cleaning the kid up. Jim made sure she knew the line before he sent them off to the river together; Scout done good. Scout's an angel. Scout's a holy warrior and is not to be allowed to dwell on imaginary sins when all she did was protect those who needed her protection. The two of them hate each other, so hearing the very same from a sworn enemy ought to drive the point on home for the girl.

Besides, it gets rid of them both, out of the way so that Jim himself can prepare. With brilliantine and a good collar and a long, back and forth argument with himself over whether or not it will be considered idolatrous if he hangs his favourite rosewood cross about his neck, he readies for battle. All the while, close by, the Tiger-Man's smirk gets louder and louder until he cannot bear the insolence any longer. "You shut up. Way they're talking down there, we ought to be on the road out right now, and right quick. But I told that gambling man in as many words, I ain't leaving without a souvenir."

"Ah," comes the dawning of understanding over him, "you mean Blusher."

"_Miss Hooper_, thank you very much." But yes, he means. Until just today and all this bad publicity, it wouldn't have taken much at all, but now? This, tonight? This is going to be a performance that would pack out the great theatres of the world, six nights and a matinee and ovations every time. It'll have to be. He'll convince her he's been wronged, that envy and hate will lay him low. It'll be the same tale the Scout spun on the farrier, a consistency that will carry after they're gone and protect them all. When she believes that the rest won't be so difficult, be a scene he's played before, not just on these happy few that are still with him but on others whose ailments transpired to be more concrete.

When he's pretty much content with himself, and running out of time, he reaches for the nearest bible. His hand hesitates over grabbing it and he instead calls back over his shoulder, "Paris, where's your hollow book?"

"In the lockbox."

"I'ma borrow that."

It's an old trick, to dig out a pit in the pages. They've got them for emergency money, jewels for hock, Paris's little perfume bottles. This particular one is hers alone, and heavier than any little book has a right to be. The gun inside is a lady's type, small and snub and nickel-bright. It was stolen from a society aunt of hers when she left with them, rumoured to have been used to shoot a burglar at the back of the house while a party went on in the front. A man might be ashamed to carry it, but as something that can be hidden, Jim ain't too proud. It shoots straight and he ain't ever known it to backfire. It's all a man ought to ask of a firearm.

"I'm going back to town," he tells the Tiger-Man. "When Scout's been cleansed of all that scarlet, tell her to go get her horse and hurry back."

"Yes, sir. Be obliged if you didn't take too long about it, though."

"What're you worried for? Ain't a soul in Bakerville got so much as an upset stomach yet. They can't string us up, not without getting into that medicine chest. Straighten your back, Tiger. Ain't a gallows built anyway wouldn't break if they hung you from it."

Still, this time he takes the more docile of the wagon horses, for speed. He's known which door was Miss Hooper's from the very first night in the saloon, saw it as they left for the Sheriff's home. Grateful for its being away from the main streets, set back in shadow, he rides right up to it, and is grateful again to see lights on inside. Nonetheless, he plans as he dismounts that his openings words should apologize for waking her at such an hour, that he simply could not leave town without speaking with her again, so distressed had she seemed, and he perfects the wording of it as he raises his fist to knock on the door.

The door swings at the slightest touch, unlatched.

She might not be home for the night. She may just have stopped back to get something. She's dashed inside and is getting ready to dash back out again. That's all.

It's just, he can't hear any activity inside. He calls, "Miss Hooper?" and has no reply for it. Not a single sound, except for the merest squeak from the hinge when a breeze catches the door another inch open. "Aw, hell," and he steps inside. Why is it he can't ever have something nice? Why is it he gets stuck with a dullard giant, a heartless whore and a lunatic girl and he ain't even allowed this one thing that might have been bright and special and really meant something? He could have _sailed_ to California on Molly Hooper's honesty and her big clear eyes, like a bird riding the currents of the air, but no, no, this has been denied him. Damn it, there ain't a single thing about it fair.

Having already giving up, it's disinterested steps that bring him through to the sitting room. The last of his curiosity only wants to know what happened to her.

There's a little door at the back that leads to a kitchen. The lights are on in there, showing him an upturned chair and the odd edges of a woman collapsed just out of sight. He sees a pale and reaching hand and hears the words, "Help me."

For a second he might.

Then he sighs, "Why? What are you going to do for me? You see what I mean, Miss Hooper?" Already, he's on his way back to the front door, "Things is a two-way street. And honest, you ain't got nothing to offer anymore."

He pulls the door shut tight on his way back out.


	16. The Hope That's Vanished

The lights are out in the stables now, as Scout wends her drifting, dancing way down the deserted street. She's full of the red dust, feeling herself a part of the breeze, just as light, just as natural. So far from how she rode into town.

At least, to judge by John Watson's description of her, she's come a long way.

Holmes and the farrier are standing side-by-side, given over to the dark just inside the doors, watching her come. She looks just as light as a feather. Ain't none of the desperation or pain Watson says he saw on her now. She comes rolling from foot to foot, swaying, waltzing herself since there's no one to waltz her, and singing since there's no one to hear, _Many's the hope that's vanished, after the ball_…

"She was cut to _pieces_ bef-" Watson hisses, but one raised hand silences his disbelief. Holmes knew what he was going to say before he even tried it. Reckons it to be true, too; the glitter in the girl's eyes, the new dishevelled manner, going without a disguise… All of this, and his own simple instinct, it tells him one thing all too clear. Murder. Done lost her mind, maybe, because of it, but murder's what it is.

_After the ball was over, just at the break of dawn_ – She's taking her sweet time with getting closer. Too much of this standing around in the dark and quiet. This could have been a different sort of a night. Holmes is all too aware of it. What if, for instance, he had resolved to show strength, after the preacher's cheating at poker? As things stand, he walked out the back door in pretty much the second Moriarty went out the front, went out raging and cussing at the ground and would have punched a man that asked him the time to set his watch by. But what if he hadn't? What if, for instance, he'd decided that a man's pride required him to stay, and have at least one more drink, or he'd have failed himself?

Why, he wouldn't be standing here. Neither, for that matter, would John Watson, and that fact is the source of the improbable tension betwixt the two of them. If someone could speak, there might be hope. Holmes has no idea what they might say, but there might be hope.

But nobody _can_ speak because that demoniac little monster is still spinning her _slow_ pirouette down the damned street.

This wicked creature, with the stink of some honest man's blood still all over her more than like, it's her fault. Holmes has no doubt in that. Watson'll blame himself, he's no doubt of that either, but the girl is the root, the vile cause. She was the one that stood here in tears, one cripple before another, except she's crazy enough to believe her pains are gone. She was the one stood here and pushed a weakened man over the edge.

Weakened, you'll notice, is the word. Not weak. Far from weak, and it hurts Holmes to think of what must have happened to bring him here.

The cane was leaning on the end post of the horse stalls when he came by. After all, the stables worked out pretty good last time Hudson's started to feel unfriendly. He'd brought decent liquor again, and the cards – since John knows the trick of their telling, he was going to offer to sit with his back to any light and keep an honest game honest. Didn't even have to be no money involved, just the company and… yes, comfort. His pride didn't keep him in the saloon and it don't keep him from admitting, comfort. But the cane was leaning on the end post. It was leaning, the fire casting a dancing shadow of it, and John Watson was seeking comfort of his own in a more dangerous bottle than was ever filled at the forest still.

Holmes picked up the cane and broke the glass in his hand. A shard of it remains there, but it's a minor pain, and a minor price considering what could have become had he downed the clear liquid as it seemed he intended to. He wasn't best pleased, at first. He did quite a bit of hollering, for a god-fearing man.

But he saw. He saw right quick and without much helping from Holmes either, just through letting the hate and the frustration pour out of him, he saw. He saw what he'd almost done and why.

Holmes wasn't sure at first why the two of them got to waiting behind his door, watching the girl's horse flick its tail and toss its head at the trough outside. Of course, the idea was always they would surprise her. Watching her come up now, Holmes can almost feel the damp-match bend of her arm twisted up good and high behind her, and wonders what sort of muffled noise it might make inside his fist were it to break. It's just a wondering. A thought. No more than this. It's just that now that he's seen her, and confirmed murder's been done, the rest is sort of fallen into place. He knows who she killed, and why. He knows why they're standing here and that it is, after all, more important than petty vengeance.

Though petty vengeance, it must be said, would have sufficed quite nicely if justice hadn't come to stick its oar in.

"_After the ball was over, Bonnie took out her glass eye_-" Close now, Holmes risks a more definite look. She's red and flaking; cried and scrubbed free of it like a kitten. The blouse she's wearing ain't her own and don't match her boys' britches at all. Like something escaped, she goes softly to her animal and lifts its head, "-_put her false teeth out in water, hung up her hair to dry-"_ Stupid rhymes, too accomplished to be her own, but her joke makes her giggle to herself. She'd laugh at a funeral, this vermin. "-_laid her false arm on the table, laid her false leg on the chair_."

After it's all done and over, like the unfortunate Bonnie, the red-haired girl ain't half there.

She coos softly to the animal, asking as if of a child if it's recovered from their hard ride before, how she'll reward him in due course but tonight, tonight they got to get out. The wagons are loaded, she explains. Aside from one suitcase and one dumb woman, they're all packed to leave, and girl and beast must be along with them.

Even standing still, she stumbles. It's a shock and a disappointment to Holmes that it took him this long to notice. With barely sound, he says enough for Watson to hear, "She's drunk. Drugged maybe, doesn't know it herself."

That's when he steps out. No care, no quiet; she sees him and fumbles the only moment in which she might escape. To begin with she does the smart thing and tries to run, but remembers her horse and gets tangled in taking the reins down from the post. Holmes grabs the reins from her, passing them to the emerging Watson as he takes her by the wrists.

"What?" she's muttering. "No. No, who in hell are you?"

"The blasted Angel Gabriel, far's you're concerned. Reckon that puts you in some mighty deep trouble, little girl."

"But why?" She looks quite as though her head hurts. "Why, when we're both holy warriors, after all?"

Watson's behind, whispering he don't like it, whispering she weren't never crazy before. Holmes ignores him. Takes some doing, but he does. It helps to keep eye contact with the girl. That saps so much of his energy as to make it quite a bit easier. "I want you to take me to whoever told you you were a holy anything, kid."

"Oh, no, no. I can't do that. I can't." Shaking her head so hard her hair swings like rag moss, the very idea drives red hot through her soul. "I can't, I couldn't do a thing like that, they're gone anyway, I don't know where they are, that's why I need my horse, may I please have the reins of my horse, please, Mr Watson? He's _my_ horse. I need him now, thank you."

A look from Holmes ought to stop him handing it over. But the fool-man, she's got to him, walked out of her sanity and into charm. He passes the straps back into her grasping, clumsy fist, and walks away. Inside, into the dark. Holmes leans around the door to yell.

Ends up, he never makes a sound. The farrier's in there already mounted on one of the renters, and easing another forward from its stall with a reaching hand.

Hell of an idea, and a hell of a time that girl's having getting up on her own animal; she won't be hard to follow.


	17. The Round-Up

A safe distance is a difficult thing to judge. They can't let her disappear into the dark, and she can't be allowed to hear hooves. Her singing helps with the latter; a little louder now, and she sways low against the horse's neck. Still singing _After The Ball_, or parts of it, and mixed with parts of parody, parts repeated, parts collided with other parts.

"She weren't never crazy before, Holmes."

It's the second or maybe third time Watson's tried to tell him so. Seems he can't see the murder radiating off the poor creature. Can't see or can't make the connection, that's what's become of her.

"I know why you don't answer," the farrier continues. "I know what you think. But you never saw her before. She wasn't the slightest bit crazy. Right on the edge of it and acted so from time to time, but that's too close to snap. Hang back a second; I saw her lift her head."

"Searching out stars, most likely." Watson reaches across and takes a handful of mane. Holmes and his horse both try to pull away. "You want to lose her?"

"We won't. We're only close as we are because you say she's drugged-"

"You say she ain't?"

"If she can't hear these animals of ours, we can let her go a-ways ahead before we lose the sound of hers."

Holmes breathes out slow, looks down. "I apologize. You're the wiser of us." He says it but doesn't believe it. If she's so far gone there's no harm in following close as they please. Hell, if he'd stayed by her and kept up that line about angels they may, at this moment, have been enjoying an elaborate and involved discussion about how the dinner tables are set in heaven. But he ain't got the faintest suggestion of an idea what might lie ahead or what they ought to do about it and ain't foolhardy enough to go into it alone.

By slow steps, hanging back, "You never did tell me what war it was done for you."

"Don't intend to, neither."

"What about where you were before it?"

"Same place most people was, I figure. Home."

Before Holmes can get _too_ frustrated with being constantly drawn on to the next and more obvious question, the dim shape of the drowsing girl becomes more earnest in her search for stars, rising up, rolling her shoulders around. Just stretching out, maybe.

Then she hauls the reins away left and goads the horse hard, calling out to it, and takes off galloping. A few unsavoury utterances between them and Holmes and Watson are behind her. But this is off the track, through woods and over brush, and their coach-horses ain't best used to it. Not like the wild thing and her mount, disappearing into it. They catch one spot of moonlight and catch it just enough to see the red hair thrown back, teeth flashing to bellow bright like a coyote, a new song, _Oh, there ain't no soul with a heart of gold in the south, in the south, in the so-o-uthern lands!_

A new song, loud enough to be heard all around. It's a warning.

"Split," Watson says. "We'll round her up between us." It could be a good idea or a bad one, Holmes don't get the time to think about it. Even as he falls into his place in what may well be a crazy plan, he's ruffled, indignant. This ain't no battlefield, is how his thoughts run, to require such rash decision-making, and this former soldier ain't no captain or lieutenant or whatever he was before, not anymore.

Then a low branch lashes his face. These woods need all his attention. Besides, ain't a word of that thinking anything but horseshit anyway.

He's surprised, impressed even, how quickly the girl's singing moves, first level with him somewhere in the dark, and then behind. Watson's already waiting farther on, turned to face back. They can wait right here, she'll come firing on into their waiting arms. "I never questioned this idea," he feels the need to say. "Not for a second, I knew it was a great idea."

"…Come again?"

Before he can say a word to Watson in explanation, something with just about all the qualities of a railway sleeper – hard and crushing and that tar-stained colour – wraps around his chest and drags him down from his horse. Legs dragging useless behind, up is down for a terrible second, and he turns his eyes back to the whites to see above him, the African. Or Englishman or however the tales unravel, the Samson called the Tiger-Man, that's who's locked tight as a barrel hoop round his ribs. "I'm questioning it now," he rasps with the last of his breath.

Red gathers at the edges of his vision, and he watches Watson reach to his hip, only to find the holster empty. On instinct, he takes the reins of his horse a little tighter. Holmes wouldn't blame him if he took off. But the woman steps around from behind him, with his gun in one hand and her pale skirts in the other, taking what little light there is like a spirit. "Don't you go taking offence now," she smiles up. "Ain't 'cause you're a cripple or nothing, why the big guy's taking care of him and I can hold you off, ain't that at all. Preacher just reckons you're the less like to hit a woman."

"How far you trust him?"

The Scout is the next to arrive, walking now, and backward too she's so sure of her companions, backward so she can stroke and kiss her horse's nose, "Who's my best guy, huh? It's you, ain't it? Yes, it is, my big strong swift guy. Why, you and me's a real team, ain't we?" Drawing level, she's got a little shame, enough to hang her head and speak past the Widow Paris to Watson. "I'm real sorry. You were good to me before." With a toss of her hand she throws to Holmes, "You, _Gabriel_, I could care less about. Anyway, I couldn't just have either of you follow."

It seems to Holmes Moriarty is impossibly slow in catching up. But he comes on one of them great beastly wagon horses, all in cleric's black, beaming down on the young girl as he pauses by her. "Did I do alright?" she asks.

"You did beautiful. You know, I seem to get prouder and prouder every time I see you, sweetheart. Ain't a thing I can do about it; you're turning into a brave, smart young lady, ain't a think I can- _Goddamnit, Tiger, loosen up there!"_ Forgetting his ever-so-impressive charge he pushes over fast, towering over Holmes as the last of anything clouds over white, vanishing. "Let up! He can't pay attention if he's passed out."

The deathly clutch at his chest eases. Only very slightly, not enough to kill the red heat in his ribs, but enough to let air in. Holmes gasps and the mist slowly begins to clear. The woman gives him time to recuperate, crying out, "Pay attention? What've they got to pay attention for?"

"'Cause I'm gone speak with them, Paris."

"Aw, hell," she moans. "Ain't no good idea to leave them living, Jim, and you know it. Besides, it'll take days to bring the Tiger back down. He ain't had any murdering in over a week, you know how he gets."

"Hush!" he snaps at her.

She falls into silence, but her arm straightens, grip on Watson's revolver tightening. She ain't even looking anymore but her aim is where it has always been, and it is good and true. She looks quite as if at any moment her finger might slip and the argument be ended, one way or another. Seems, though, Moriarty's got faith in something. He's not looking that way anymore.

"Hey. Gambling man. You awake?"

Yes, but only just. Not enough to answer. What would he say, even if he could? Yes, sir, no, sir, as you wish, sir. He wouldn't have a single syllable worth wasting on this man even if his throat weren't choked with hot wires.

"I'll take your defiance as an affirmative, shall I? Anyhow, sir, here we are at something of a stalemate. You don't want us to leave and we're prepared to do some mighty awful things not to stay. Puts you in a fairly terrible position. A less Christian gentleman than myself might make use of the fact that we've got the two of you pretty much pinned down just now. But I am no less Christian than I am, and therefore I have a great belief in giving a guy a sporting chance."

"…To fix us all with a spot on the scaffold," Paris mutters.

"You'll have to forgive her. Youngest child, don't you know. By the time she got to the jug, weren't but a drop of the milk of human kindness left over. Anyway, where was I? Oh. A sporting chance. Gentlemen, I'm going to let you two ride away. Easy as that. And you two are going to take that chance, ain't you?"

Holmes is busy trying to figure it out. There's an angle, a game, and he ain't seeing it.

Watson, not thinking so far ahead, hawks back hard and spits at the hooves of the preacher's horse.

"Figured somebody might say something like that," comes the smile. "But, again, my Lord requires me to try and help you poor sinners, so let's try this…" He changes. Every word crystallizes hard and they follow upon each other fast as bullets, "In a galley back kitchen, one of them little houses down by the saloon, the dear Miss Molly Hooper is lying at the edge of the death, full of whatever was killing her or whatever she wanted to kill her. Couldn't move when I saw her, but I reckon somebody could move her. Now does that make you want to leave at all, Mr Holmes?"

Impasse barely survives another second. Just that moment to decide if it's true or not, a moment more to see if it is. Then Holmes nods across at the woman, "She puts the gun down."

"Do it, Paris."

She rages and flusters and stamps her foot. Ultimately she spins away and pitches the weapon arching into the dark. While her back is turned, Watson ratchets back his boot and brings it down on her neck so hard she flies a foot or two before she hits the ground.

Moriarty looks the act over with cold appraisal and nods for Holmes to be released. "Better hurry on back to town, now, before one or the other of these decides to avenge that. Miss Hooper'll most likely be grateful too."


	18. A Knot At The End Of The Rope

John don't know if Hooper's going to be saved. He knows he got here fast after the scene in the woods last night. He knows it wasn't but five minutes after him that Doctor Stamford arrived, nightshirt tucked into his britches, so Holmes did no dawdling either. He knows she looks a hell of a lot more alive this morning, even if she ain't opened her eyes or spoke, than she did when he found her on that cold floor. But he don't know if she's going to be saved.

He don't know either if her chances would be any better had Holmes himself come on here to the end of the line. He does know he feels that way. And even if they wouldn't have improved the probability one single point in percentages, he's mighty riled it didn't go on and happen anyway.

There's a woman lying half-murdered in that house and Holmes didn't even come to see.

Half-murdered the way he might have murdered himself over that holy water, would have done if it hadn't been stricken from him, and Holmes didn't even come to see.

It's a slight that ought to go unpunished. Socially, perhaps, there ought to be repercussions. They ought to pass each other in the street now with no acknowledgement. No more quiet drinking by the melting fire, no cards, no tipping of hats, none of it. But otherwise, nothing.

It's just that John's fist keeps balling up. Quite of its own accord, and only when he ain't looking to see. When he catches himself, he forces it open. Next time he glances down, undoubtedly his fingernails will be biting into his palm. There's special providence in a habit so resilient as that. It ought not be ignored. Ought not be done the disservice of burying it, though the pastor might say otherwise. No, that fist wants something and whether or not John admits it he wants it too. It's only right. Natural justice and to hell with the social and religious sorts. Holmes ought've come down here last night.

John fully expects to find him at home. But having left his cane at the stables last night when they took off mounted, he has to use the cover of the early morning wisely to go and fetch it. It ain't so bad. Ain't bad at all, stopping for a second at the hitching post by the Sheriff's office. Why, his bootlace really does need tied. That's all pauses him.

The door, he sees, is lying wide open. All sorts inside, firearms and keys and manacles, and money too, but the door wide open, and down by his feet there are great curves carved in the dust where rushing feet have scattered beneath the runner.

He straightens up and moves on with a little more care than before, wishing his own weapon was closer than the woods out near the still.

The farther he goes, he starts to see shutters open. Not much, just enough for a cautious eye to be pressed to the gap and look outside. Lace shades are plucked up at the edges, and brazen children are making their way out onto the porches already. All of them watching a pretty house not far down the street from the stables, a nicely kept place. So early in the day, normally there wouldn't be any sign of life there. Mrs Adler, after all, does work so very late at that piano of hers in the saloon.

There is no music now. There's a bray, instead, so much less cultured than John would ever expect from her and so _vulgar_, "Ain't no goddamn proof, is all! Not a single shred! I defy you to produce to me something even suggests I'd dream of such a thing!"

The next voice is lower, softer, full of lilting tones; Lestrade, but not loud enough to make out the words. And just then the whole scene comes into view, the woman in her robe in the doorway trying to keep the assured, languid lawman outside. And not far from them, leaning on somebody's porch rail with a little boy standing mute and curious next to him, Holmes, with a pipe in his hand, taking pride and pleasure in the whole impolite arrangement.

As Watson gets close he glances toward his shoulder. Or rather, he turns his head, for his eyes never leave the arguing Adler. There's still a sort of urgency and speed to, "How's Hooper?"

"I don't rightly know, I ain't tended on her. More colour in her, though." This is in no way satisfactory to Holmes, not nearly enough, but still he nods and goes back to his intent watch. "What's happening here?"

The merest suggestion of a smile, "Getting close to resisting arrest, I reckon."

"Arrest? Adler? Why?"

"For the attempted murder of Margaret Annabel Hooper, of course."

John mutters, "Hellfire…"

"Well, that don't come 'til after they hang her."

Holmes explains that he _did_ go to the sick woman's house after all. He was going to come in at the back door and look at the kitchen, seeing that's where Moriarty said he saw her. "I knew from what words he chose to talk with last night he hadn't killed her. Disappointed him, in fact, to find her useless. He'd had his own designs. Which Mrs Adler wasn't best pleased with." Holmes shows him the glass vial with its silver stopper, says he found it rolled under the step up from the alley behind. He gave the traces inside the same test Hooper gave the solution yesterday and pulled a hell of a lot of arsenic from not a lot of liquid. And on the vial itself, a reddened fingertip had left the slightest touch of rouge as the lady prepared for the evening. "Ain't but a handful of women in town dare to wear it. Weren't but a handful of women dared to be out last night, once the word got around, knowing the murdering preacher would be trying to make his escape. Weren't but one woman stood in both circles. Besides, Mrs Adler was having trouble keeping her eyes on her piano last night. I'll admit I had my suspicions from that moment on."

"Holmes," Watson says, and means it so sincerely he feels as if he ain't been truly sincere in quite some time, "that is quite brilliant."

A shrug. "It's knowing and thinking, is all."

"I was going to go to your home and punch your face, do you know that? I thought you didn't give a hoot about… what was it? Margaret Annabel?"

"I'd be obliged if you'd give me ten minutes to get to my home ahead of you," he mumbles. Gesturing over at Adler's porch, where the argument is likely about to end, "Stay for the rest."

"You won't?"

"I know how the rest goes. I linger any longer it'll happen to m-"

"_You_!" Adler half-screeches, and Holmes rolls his eyes as if to say, _Too late_. "_You_ did this to me. Don't think I don't know it. And hell, ain't like anybody around here needs to prove a thing before they go rounding up a posse now, is it?" She's making a fool of herself. He ought to tell her so, it would stop her, make her think. But Holmes stands watching with exasperation and disregard that only drive her own to hotter fury, "Damn, never did have to be this way. You and me could've gotten out of here long ago, and I wouldn't never have been desperate like I am to get out of this ragged heap of clapboard and horse stench and this infernal _dust_! Don't ever think I don't blame you, Holmes. I'll be the end of you, you and that whole other pack of rats that cleared out of here in the night like the shamed outlaws they are. You ain't no better. Can't believe I ever thought you were."

"What in the hell is she talking about?" Holmes asks of Watson. Adler all but screams, but the Sheriff has her now, both wrists turned up behind her. Now, finally, she realizes this doesn't have to be so ignominious as she's making it.

Holmes turns again, trying to get away ahead of her, out from under all the disapproving gazes that assume there's something in her talk. It leaves John struggling to keep up with him but at least nobody's giving him so much as a thought. "Where are you going?" he just manages.

"Told you; home. Have to pack."

"Pack for what?"

A stop, just the slightest pause in his step, a look of utter disbelief, "Ain't just letting Moriarty walk away. Not when at least two of four's killers and the messenger's dead."

"You're going after them."

"What else can I do?" A few steps on, he glances back again. Sounding less certain now, "You coming?"

"…Reckon so, yeah."


End file.
